First city-run grocery store to open in the Bronx, Mayor Mamdani says

Josephine Stratman, New York Daily News on May 18, 2026

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NEW YORK — The first city-run grocery store will open next year in Hunts Point, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Monday, in a step towards delivering a key campaign promise of one such supermarket in every borough.

The 20,000-square-foot store is slated to open at The Peninsula, an affordable housing development built at the site of the former Spofford Juvenile Detention Facility.

“This store, and The Peninsula as a whole, will serve as physical proof of our conviction that government can be a force for good, that government can drive change that improves people’s lives,” Mamdani said at a rally announcing the site.

The store will offer discounted rates on a “basket” of essential goods like eggs and produce, the mayor said. Other items in the store will be sold at market rates.

The Bronx location was chosen in part due to the area only having one other full-service supermarket within a quarter of a mile, the mayor said, despite the nearby Hunts Point Cooperative Market, one of the world’s largest food distribution centers.

“We know the number of families that face food insecurity have only increased,” Maria Torres, the president of the Point Community Development Corporation said at the rally. “Pilot projects such as this would help to give families in our community some much-needed relief from the high cost of food, as well as healthy options that have been missing from our community for decades.”

Mamdani promised to construct a city-run store in each of the five boroughs as part of his affordability-centric campaign. He previously announced the location of the Manhattan store at La Marqueta in East Harlem.

That store, unlike the Bronx location, will be built from the ground up and is expected to be completed in 2029.

Mamdani has proposed putting $70 million towards the grocery stores in the upcoming fiscal year’s budget, which the mayor’s side is still negotiating with the City Council.

The mayor’s plan has raised some concerns from grocery store and bodega owners who’ve said the city-run stores pose unwelcome competition. Mamdani said his administration is communicating with those local owners as they roll out their stores.

“It will continue after the launch of these city-run stores as well, and so there is going to be a continued commitment to ensuring the flourishing of the ecosystem as a whole,” Mamdani said.

The city is also encouraging property owners to submit their sites for consideration for stores in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.

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