NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Sunday announced the city’s first publicly owned grocery store will open in East Harlem, with the project expected to cost approximately $30 million — nearly half of the $70 million he proposed as recently as February to fund all five planned city-owned supermarkets.

The store will be located in La Marqueta, a marketplace beneath the elevated train tracks on Park Avenue, and is scheduled to open next year. The space is already city-owned and the store will operate without rent, according to the mayor. It will be built on a currently vacant portion of the market.

Mamdani made the announcement at a Queens event marking his first 100 days in office, where Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) made a surprise appearance.

“During our campaign, we promised New Yorkers that we would create a network of five city-owned grocery stores, one in each borough,” Mamdani said. “Today, we make good on that promise.”

The mayor pledged all five stores would be operational before his first term ends at the close of 2029. He argued the initiative would lower food costs for low-income New Yorkers, noting that grocery prices in New York City rose nearly 66 percent between 2013 and 2023, significantly higher than the national average.

“Eggs will be cheaper, bread will be cheaper, grocery shopping will no longer be an unsolvable equation,” he said.

The $30 million cost for the East Harlem location, reported by the New York Times, raises questions about the program’s budget. Mamdani proposed $70 million in February to cover all five stores. With one store consuming nearly half that sum, the remaining four locations would have roughly $40 million combined — less than $10 million each — unless the administration seeks additional funding from the City Council. His office did not address the gap Sunday.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)