Summarize and humanize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in EnglishMayor Zohran Mamdani, moving forward with a key campaign promise despite the concerns of some business leaders, announced on Monday that New York City’s first city-owned grocery store will open in Hunts Point in the Bronx next year.The mayor wants to create a 20,000-square-foot store at the Peninsula, an affordable housing development in a neighborhood in the South Bronx with a high poverty rate.Mr. Mamdani has pledged to create five city-owned stores, one in each borough by the end of his first term, with the aim of making groceries more affordable for some shoppers. He previously unveiled plans for a store at La Marqueta in East Harlem in Manhattan, which he wants to open by 2029.“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,” he said Monday at a rally with union members at the Bronx site.Mr. Mamdani ran for mayor on a platform designed to address the high cost of living, including rising grocery bills. The city plans to waive rent and taxes for the five new grocery stores so that they can offer residents discounted prices on food.But the mayor’s plan has raised concerns from some small business owners and economists, who worry that city-owned stores could hurt smaller supermarkets and question whether his approach is the best way to reduce grocery prices.Jerry Nunez, a manager at City Fresh Market near the East Harlem site, asked the mayor at a forum last month why he had chosen a neighborhood that already had several stores.“We were right around the corner,” Mr. Nunez said. “Why so close?”Mr. Mamdani told him that East Harlem was an area where “many are being priced out of the basic essentials.”“My vision is not that there isn’t room for multiple grocery stores,” Mr. Mamdani said. “My vision is that there is a grocery store within New Yorkers’ reach where they know that they can afford certain things.”His administration is still examining locations for grocery stores in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, and encouraged property owners to recommend sites to the city online.The site in the Bronx is in a district represented by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive ally who supports the mayor’s grocery store plan.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement that she was grateful to Mr. Mamdani for working to “strengthen food access across the South Bronx.”“Access to affordable, fresh food should not be a luxury determined by ZIP code — it should be a right,” she said.Justin E. Sanchez, the City Council member who represents the neighborhood, said that it should be a “bountiful oasis of nutritious food, not a desert” and that he welcomed the plans for the store.The City Council would have to approve funding for the stores, including the mayor’s request to spend $70 million in capital dollars to build them. Julie Menin, the Council speaker, has expressed concerns about how the plan would affect bodegas.The Peninsula is a project by the city’s Economic Development Corporation to redevelop the former Spofford Juvenile Detention Facility, a troubled center that permanently closed in 2011.The campus is expected to include 740 units of affordable housing, space for light manufacturing and community events, and commercial space that will house the grocery store.A digital rendering of the Peninsula development in Hunts Point.Credit…New York City Economic Development CorporationA two-bedroom apartment at the development costs about $700 to $2,298 per month, depending on a family’s income.The mayor’s office said that it had chosen sites for the stores based on “grocery store density, income inadequacy and population density.” It noted that there was only one full-service supermarket, Compare Foods Supermarket, within one-fourth of a mile of the Hunts Point location.The neighborhood, along the East River, is home to one of the largest food distribution facilities in the world. It became known for urban disinvestment in the 1970s and the fires that raged in the South Bronx.Despite city investments in the decades since, the poverty rate in Hunts Point was 36 percent in 2023, compared with 18 percent citywide, according to the Furman Center.Maria Torres, the president of the Point Community Development Corporation, a group that works on economic revitalization in the neighborhood, said that neighbors “consistently requested a healthy foods supermarket” as part of the planning for the Peninsula.“We are incredibly excited and hopeful that this pilot project will deliver that to this community,” she said.Victoria Melendez, a resident of the development, said at Mr. Mamdani’s rally that the neighborhood needed an affordable and convenient option.“This will put a little more money in our pockets for other things,” she said.Majora Carter, an entrepreneur and community leader in Hunts Point, said that food access had improved in the neighborhood in recent years. She said had just bought three cases of heirloom tomatoes from a street vendor for $30 and “both of us were thrilled with the deal.”Ms. Carter called the mayor’s goal “laudable,” but questioned whether there were ways funding from the city could achieve similar results more quickly.“Could local grocery stores, green delis and street produce vendors be subsidized with innovative demand-inducing programming that could help folks eat healthier and cheaper?” she said. “That could start tomorrow.”The opposition has been mobilizing to try to stop the stores. Frank Garcia, the chairman of the Multicultural Business Coalition, a nonprofit that opposes city-owned stores, said that he was trying to raise $1 million to highlight the concerns of store owners.The group is planning to rally at City Hall on May 29, when the City Council is expected to hold a hearing about the city’s Economic Development Corporation, which is overseeing the city-owned stores.Mr. Garcia said he was prepared to file a lawsuit in hopes of preventing them from opening.“This is a waste of our tax dollars,” he said. “The mayor should sit down with us, and we can give him a real plan to bring down prices.”Mr. Garcia said he had spoken to Ms. Menin’s office about his concerns. Ms. Menin said in a statement that the City Council was “working to identify responsible solutions to lower costs and address food insecurity.”“The Council looks forward to receiving further details on the administration’s proposal at the upcoming hearing,” her spokesman said.Rubén Luna, who owns supermarkets in the Bronx and Manhattan, said he was worried that shoppers would flock to cheaper city-owned stores, leading to job losses at his locations.“We’re not going to survive,” he said. “There’s no way we can compete.”
