Norwood News

Avi Kaner, vice president and part owner of the Morton Williams supermarket chain, picks up a box of Driscoll’s brand strawberries off the produce rack in the company’s Kingsbridge Road store and says, “Look, same as you get at Whole Foods in Manhattan.”

Quality produce is just one reason why Kaner believes the city should do something to save Morton Williams from being crushed by an incoming big box supermarket at the redeveloped Kingsbridge Armory.

Buried deep inside the thousands of pages of their final Environmental Impact Statement, the Armory’s designated developer, The Related Companies, made plans to include 60,000 square feet of space for a big box supermarket, such as a Costco or Pathmark.

Jesse Masyr, a lawyer for the Related Companies, says they included the supermarket plans (which are not set in stone) because Community Board 7 members requested it. Several Board members were very vocal about wanting to see better, healthier food options, maybe even a Whole Foods, at the Armory, adding that they usually shopped outside the borough for groceries.

Kaner and Morton Williams President Morton Sloan say a new, giant supermarket, working with the help of city subsidies, would force them to close the two supermarkets they operate on Jerome Avenue — one just across the street from the Armory, the other just a few blocks down the road, closer to Fordham Road.

Combined, the two stores are only about 50,000 square feet, Sloan says.

“They would destroy us,” Sloan added.

The Family Business
The Sloan family has been in the Bronx grocery business for three generations. “My grandfather owned a bunch of fruit and veggie stands,” Sloan says. His father owned and operated three supermarkets, all of which he operated under the banner of a cooperative called the Associated supermarkets. All Associateds were individually owned, but came together to share food and advertising contracts.

It was Morton and his brother William who built their father’s three stores into 12. Only in the last few years, have they switched their two Bronx supermarkets to the Morton Williams brand.

Since the beginning of the Armory’s redevelopment process, which officially began nearly three years ago, Morton Sloan has been at community hearings and brainstorming sessions to advocate against a new supermarket at a revamped Armory. 

Sloan and Kaner were pleased when the city sent out a request for proposals saying it didn’t want the Armory to include businesses that would compete with other area businesses. Related, a developer with deep pockets and a lengthy portfolio, won the bid, but didn’t mention supermarkets in its original plans.

In May of this year, Kaner and Sloan said they arranged a meeting (with the help of Council Member Maria Baez) with Masyr and other Related officials, including Related’s head of retail, Glenn Goldstein. “We said, very clearly, we’re not opposed to development at the Armory, but we are opposed to putting a competitor in there, especially a big box competitor,” Kaner said.

Sloan and Kaner both said Related told them that they had no plans for a supermarket at the Armory. (Masyr denies this.)
The next day, Kaner said, they received a copy of Related’s final EIS, which included supermarkets plans. They were stunned.

A Loss for the Bronx
Since then, Morton Williams has maintained the position that if the Armory supermarket plan goes through, they will be forced to close both their Bronx stores, eliminating 125 jobs in the process. It also means they will be forced to relocate their Bronx administrative and accounting offices, which sits above the Kingsbridge store and employs about 25 people.

An even bigger loss to the community, they say, will be the elimination of the supermarket chain’s hiring center. Every day, around 4 p.m., Morton Williams invites people to apply for jobs at the Bronx headquarters. One employee said there are usually dozens of people looking to fill out an application. Sloan said more than 450 Bronx residents have been hired to work at the company’s 12 stores.

Because all Morton Williams workers belong to the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Workers union (RWDSU), they receive full benefits, a pension plan and are guaranteed a 40-hour work week. “These are good union jobs, with full benefits,” Kaner said. (A quick look through Morton Williams’ payroll shows most workers make around $10 per hour. Some make more, some make less. The median yearly income, Kaner says, is around $26,000.)

Fighting Back
Morton Williams enlisted Richard Lipsky of the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, a group that advocates against big box stores like Wal Mart, to lobby against an Armory supermarket for $5,000 a month. A few years ago, Lipsky was instrumental in stopping a BJ’s, a big box supermarket, from going up on Brush Avenue in the Bronx.

A widely-circulated memo detailed the Alliance’s plan of action, which included enlisting political support and mounting an extensive public relations campaign. “We expect to have the support of the entire [Bronx] delegation which will put us in the right political position to insure the supermarket use [at the Armory] is excluded,” Lipsky writes, adding earlier that they already have Baez’s support.

Community Board 7 Chairman Greg Faulkner said he found the memo “disgusting” because it involved using other minority owners to make their case to politicians. Sloan and Kaner are both white.

Lipsky didn’t apologize for the memo, saying, “It’s our job to demonstrate all the collateral damages.”

But Lipsky says Morton Williams main position is that it’s unfair for a developer to use city tax breaks (which add up to almost $100 million total) to put them out of business, especially if the RFP explicitly says new businesses at the Armory shouldn’t compete with existing businesses.

If they were to follow that request to the letter, Masyr said the Armory would remain empty. “I can promise you that virtually everything we hope to sell, is probably going to be available somewhere else in Kingsbridge area,” he said.

Morton Williams is also up against a healthy-living and nutrition push by the Bloomberg administration. A new city ordinance the City Council is considering would give tax breaks and zoning help to new supermarkets who set up shop in certain designated low-income areas that they say lack access to quality fruits and vegetables. Kingsbridge is one of those designated areas.

Lipsky and Morton Williams say this is laughable, citing the presence of 45 supermarkets within two miles of the Armory. It would also be counter-productive in the case of the Armory because a big box supermarket would close four or five neighborhood supermarkets in the area, Lipsky says.

Moving Not an Option
At a meeting in June, Community Board 7 District Manager Fernando Tirado said the Board and borough president suggested a compromise. Tirado said they tried to convince Morton Williams to be the new supermarket tenant at the Armory as part of a Community Benefits Agreement negotiation. But they declined. Kaner said it would cost Morton Williams millions of dollars the company doesn’t want to spend to move into the Armory. 

Inside the Kingsbridge Morton Williams on a recent rainy Tuesday, shopper Hector Santana says he likes his neighborhood grocery store. It’s quiet and fast, he says, but “they could do better with the meat.” He likes the idea of a Costco in the Armory and thinks the Morton Williams would survive the competition. “It’s a different kind of store,” he says.

Claudia Rivas, an employee who lives just a few blocks away, says she’d be devastated if she lost the job she’s held for six years. “It’s comfortable here, good benefits, it’s like a family,” she adds. If it were to close, she says she doesn’t know how she’d get another job, which she needs to support her mother. “It would affect me a lot,” she concludes.