“We’re talking about delivering five city-run grocery stores in a city of eight-and-a-half million people that has more than 1,000 grocery stores,” Mamdani said in response to the lawsuit.
A New York City nonprofit representing hundreds of small supermarkets and bodegas has launched a legal challenge against Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to open at least five government-owned grocery stores across the city.
According to CNN, the lawsuit was filed earlier this week on behalf of the Multicultural Business Coalition, a group that represents small business owners in the city. Launched as a prospective class action, the lawsuit claims that Mamdani’s plan violates the civil rights of small, minority-owned grocery stores that cannot afford to match the discounts soon to be offered by city-run stores.
“It is a direct assault on minority businesses by a major who claims to be a champion of disenfranchised poor and working-class New Yorkers,” said Multicultural Business Coalition President Kenneth Roldan.
“You cannot expect hard-working small business owners to compete with a supermarket that isn’t going to pay rent, won’t have to pay an electric bill, and won’t have to buy their products at full price,” said Mark Jaffe, the group’s general counsel and the president of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce. “They cannot possible compete because no one will be subsidizing them.”
New York City street; image by Wiggijo, via Pixabay.com.
When asked for comment, New York City’s Law Department referred CNN to Mamdani’s office.
Mamdani, for his part, said that he has full confidence not only in the plan’s legality but its importance, too.
“We’re talking about delivering five city-run grocery stores in a city of eight-and-a-half million people that has more than 1,000 grocery stores,” Mamdani said, adding that two existing markets in Manhattan and Brooklyn, which operate on a similar model, have not had any perceptibly negative effect on the bodegas around them.
These two markets, notes CNN, have been operating for years under a program managed by the city’s Economic Development Corporation, which rents select city-owned properties to private vendors at below-market rates; the program also covers certain operational costs.
Separately, a spokesperson for the Economic Development Corporation, which will be tasked with running Mamdani’s proposed city-run stores, said that New York is continuing to evaluate “programs and policies to support local grocers.”
“We’re looking at the potential for tax abatement, incentives and zoning benefits through existing city programs to ensure that the city is doing everything in our power to alleviate cost pressures for small businesses across the city,” the EDC said.
Sources
New York business group sues Mamdani over city-owned grocery stores plan
New York City minority business owners sue Mamdani in bid to stop city-run grocery store plan
Opponents Sue to Stop Mamdani’s City-Owned Grocery Store Plan
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