In a related development, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and City Council member Margaret Chin are leading a push to help grocery stores remain viable. Together, they have introduced legislation in the City Council to exempt affordable grocery stores from the commercial rent tax (CRT), which imposes an annual 3.9 percent surcharge on the rent paid by a store. Enacted in 1963, the CRT is currently levied on businesses below 96th Street, but nowhere else in the five boroughs.
In this context, “affordable” is defined as any supermarket that accepts food vouchers from public-assistance plans like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), while also setting aside at least 500 square feet of store space for moderately priced fresh produce.
Under these terms, many Lower Manhattan supermarkets would likely quality for the tax break. This will strike some local residents, long accustomed to paying a galling premium at the checkout counter, as deeply counterintuitive. But it is a feature, rather than a bug in the program’s design. Even with high prices (which are more often a reflection of the staggering cost of renting space and doing business in Manhattan, rather than of windfall profits), many supermarkets operate on a razor-thin margin. They also face increased pressure from landlords, who hanker for the higher rents that might be obtained from banks or drugstore chains, or by splitting the large floor area of a typical supermarket into multiple, smaller storefronts.
These conditions are vouchsafed by the fact that more than a few local groceries have vanished from Lower Manhattan in recent years, such as Tribeca’s Food Emporium (and its successor at the same location on Greenwich Street, Best Market) and Bazzini, along with Met Foods in Little Italy, and Pathmark in Two Bridges. Throughout the five boroughs, the City lost roughly 300 greengrocers between 2005 and 2015, with one-third of these causalities occurring in Manhattan. In the majority of cases, these closures occurred in low-income communities, which already lack access to fresh food.
“Affordable supermarkets are the lifeblood of our communities, and New York City is losing them at a rapid pace,” observed Ms. Brewer.
“Every time a grocery store closes its doors, the community suffers,” added Ms. Chin. “While our grocery stores fuel the vitality of neighborhoods across the City, too many of them have been forced to pay the antiquated commercial rent tax on top of the hundreds of thousands of dollars they already pay in rent. Two years ago, the Council passed a landmark bill to exempt more businesses from having to pay this tax. The legislation we are introducing builds on that effort by providing desperately needed relief for the grocery stores and workers on the frontlines of combatting food insecurity in our neighborhoods.”
Matthew Fenton
