Add The New York Post on Google Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration hasn’t bothered to study his city-run grocery store plan’s potential effect on local small businesses, his budget chief admitted Tuesday.
The revelation came during a City Council hearing when Sherif Soliman — the director of the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget — was grilled on what studies the administration was conducting to see how nearby grocers would be impacted.
“We are attuned to those issues,” Soliman said when pressed by Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks (D-Staten Island), as he dodged on specifics.
“We also know that there are small business services we are investing in as much as we can to help small businesses.”
Mamdani’s pricey plan to build a city-owned grocery store in each of the five boroughs has been denounced by a slew of local business groups — with mom-and-pop shopkeepers fearing they won’t be able to compete with the new outposts’ subsidized pricing.
A coalition of disgruntled business owners also has already built up a $1 million war chest to oppose the initiative – which the city has announced two locations for, leaving three promised shops remaining.
The mayor has claimed his grocery store plan — a key platform of his campaign — will allow New Yorkers to purchase discounted goods and only cost the city roughly $70 million.
But the Manhattan-based store, announced by Mamdani in April, is already slated to cost at least $30 million.
Mamdani claimed his office was conducting “sustained outreach” to grocery stores and trade organizations at a May press conference — but grocery store owners disputed that, saying they still hadn’t heard from any city officials.
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Frank Garcia, chairman of the Multicultural Business Coalition nonprofit group, claimed Mamdani’s office had been radio silent.
“We have not heard anything from the mayor. We’ve reached out, we’ve sent letters — we have not heard anything at all,” said Garcia at a rally against the public stores last week outside City Hall.
Set to open in 2029, the city-owned Manhattan shop will be a 9,000-square-foot shop in La Marqueta — a marketplace under the train tracks running over Park Avenue in East Harlem.
The first store slated to open will be at The Peninsula – a former Juvenile Detention Center in The Bronx being redeveloped under the guidance of the city’s Economic Development Corporation.
The sprawling 20,000-square-center is located a stone’s throw from Hunts Point Market, the largest food distribution center in the world, and is set to open in 2027, City Hall said last month.
Hanks pressed Soliman further on if the administration planned to engage with council members when considering the locations of the other three planned stores – but he deferred to another team.
“We’re happy to take that back to our intergovernmental teams and our leadership,” he said.
