Brighton Beach To Lose Met Foods, Gain Fancy Development Targeting National Retailers

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: After more than 30 years serving the community, Brighton Beach’s Met Foods supermarket at 100-120 Brighton Beach Avenue will close down to make way for a modern two-story office and retail complex.

The supermarket lost its lease to the building to a new tenant who plans to redevelop the property and sublet it out, Arsen Atbashyan, the owner of Commercial Acquisitions, which brokered the lease, told Sheepshead Bites.

Atbashyan negotiated a 49-year land lease, signed near the end of 2011, that gives the developer rights to construct a two-story building on an 18,000-square-foot footprint, with 30,000 square feet of retail and office space available.

Atbashyan said he’s expecting to sign some big brand names as tenants.

“We are currently in the process of just starting the marketing process and at this time no tenants are on the hook,” he told Sheepshead Bites. “But we do expect national tenants to come on board as the marketing goes on.”

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Met Foods will close in October when its lease expires, and construction will begin shortly afterwards, Atbashyan said.

The deal was three years in the making, as the developer, Joseph Zafarani, sought to buy the property outright from its owners, the Bonsignore family. However, the parties couldn’t come to an agreement on a sale price, and instead agreed to a long-term lease.

While this is good news for Zafarani, Atbashyan and Bonsignore, it does leave neighbors in a tough spot. With the area’s dense populations of senior citizens, and the nearest supermarket, Key Food, approximately a half a mile away, it’s likely to mirror the loss of Pathmark on Nostrand Avenue, which closed more than a year and a half ago and continues to fuel discontent among neighbors who cannot do their supermarket shopping within walking distance.