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New York City Plan Seeks to Add More Full-Service Grocery Stores
The New York City Planning Commission has unanimously approved a measure that would provide zoning and tax incentives to full-service grocery stores that establish outlets in locations throughout the city known as food deserts, the New York Times reports. Based on a Pennsylvania-based program that provides grants and loans for supermarket construction, the program aims to eliminate barriers that grocery stores typically face when establishing outlets in poor or underserved neighborhoods. As part of the program, a residential building with a grocery store would be permitted to be 20,000-square-feet larger than existing zoning ordinances currently allow, while outlets in manufacturing districts would be permitted to be as much as 30,000-square-feet larger. In addition, smaller stores in select commercial and manufacturing districts would be exempt from a requirement mandating that they provide customer parking. Grocery stores would also be eligible for several tax abatements and other exemptions aimed at promoting construction. The program is restricted to stores located in northern Manhattan, central Brooklyn, the south Bronx and downtown Jamaica in Queens that devote at least one-half of their square footage to the sale of food and a certain amount of space specifically to fresh produce, meats, dairy and other perishables. The program will also require store owners to display a special "fresh" logo from the planning department featuring the statement "This store sells fresh food." The program has already received broad support from policy experts and supermarket executives, with one supermarket executive noting that the proposal was "a very worthy endeavor to improve nutrition." Echoing such sentiments, City Planning Commissioner Amanda M. Burden notes that "this is about being able to walk to get your groceries in those areas that are really, really underserved and basically have no place to buy fresh produce" (Cardwell, New York Times, 9/24/09 [registration required]).