Wegmans Is Coming To Admiral’s Row At The Brooklyn Navy Yard
That sound you hear is the sound of excitement and relief at news that the popular national supermarket chain Wegmans is coming to Brooklyn, and to the Brooklyn Navy Yard‘s Admiral’s Row in particular.
The announcement came Tuesday night via a New York Times article: the Rochester, NY-based company and Navy Yard partner Steiner Studios will fill the 74,000-square-foot site affordable, yet high quality groceries and will hire a staff gleaned from the surrounding community. It capped a decade of discussions about how to preserve and revitalize the Admiral’s Row site, and years of back-and-forth over which supermarket proposal to approve.
The Navy Yard selected Steiner and Wegmans above three other proposals because of the affordability of the store’s offerings and its commitment to hiring locally for full-time jobs, said David Ehrenberg, president of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation (BNYDC), the city agency that runs the 300-acre industrial complex on the East River.
Because of its emphasis on prepared foods, the company offered to create at least twice as many full-time jobs (200), and more total jobs (600) than any of the rivals. In its first two weeks of hiring, the store will interview exclusively from the three housing projects that border the Navy Yard, a community it hopes will be on both sides of the checkout line, said Danny Wegman, the grocer’s third-generation chief executive.
“People need not just good food, but good jobs,” Mr. Wegman said. “Brooklyn provides an incredible opportunity for both.”
A four-story parking garage, with two stories on top for industrial tenants, will also be built across Sands Street. The closest subway stop is the York Street F station in DUMBO, so there may be some need for shuttle service or other form of public transportation added in order to make the store even more accessible to neighbors.
Wegmans is slated to open in 2017.
The entire construction will cost around $140 million, to be paid by Steiner Studios, which will recoup costs via rent from Wegmans and other tenants on-site. Two of Admiral’s Row’s historic Civil War-era buildings will also be preserved, according to Steiner Studios’ Twitter account.
The news fulfills the dream of both long-time supermarket-starved residents in and around public housing units (such as Farragut Houses) and young professionals/recent arrivals alike — the former group eager for affordable grocery options in the neighborhood and the latter group comprising a “cult-like following” that appreciate their employment practices and became familiar with Wegmans from their hometowns and college towns in upstate New York, New Jersey, and the Washington DC area.
From the Times article:
“We’ve got these high-priced, ritzy stores opening on all sides,” said Anthony Sosa, president of the Ingersoll Houses residents’ association. “People are feeling closed in and left out.”
. . . Samantha Kartanowicz’s jaw dropped when she heard one might soon open up near her apartment. “I was just saying this morning how we could use a really good grocery store around here,” she said, having frequented a Baltimore store as a child.
For Dan Kublick, a Syracuse native, there is no more reliable way to know when his friends have returned to their hometown. “They start posting photos from Wegmans on Instagram,” he said.
Local resident Kasia Nikhamina noted that “I don’t know anything about Wegmans, but I know we need a supermarket in the area! The Navy Yard seems big enough that it could fit both preserved Admiral’s Row as a historic site, and a supermarket.”
New Jersey residents like Shirley Lew said that Wegmans has a community appeal that Whole Foods can’t compete with.
“It’s like the Nordstrom of supermarkets,” Lew explained. “My neighboring town opened up a Whole Foods last year. I walked in there once in the middle of a weekday and it was not bustling like my Wegmans. And I found parking too easily.
“They’ll create jobs and have been on the top companies to work for list for many years,” Lew added. “But take note: they are NOT union. But I love their service and it runs like a tight ship. Cashiers are bright, professional and attentive. You won’t hear a cashier talk about his/her date last night to the other cashier while they ring you up.”
And unlike rumors of Walmart expanding into the city, the prospect of Wegmans expanding into other boroughs is something at least some New Yorkers look forward to.
“I live too far to go, but where there is a master, there is an apprentice,” said Vitoria Lee, who described her love of Wegmans as a result of their “subs, sandwiches, smoothies, and fair employment practices.”
“It’s only a matter of time,” she said, “till it expands to Queens.”