Hope for a Community, Found in a Food Store

Posted on 15. Oct, 2010 by Katie Honan in Uncategorized

A new supermarket is opening next week on the Rockaway peninsula.  This usually wouldn’t be big news, but for a community that has gone without for years, it may be the start of something good: the long-overdue revitalization of an area on the decline since the mid-20th Century, when it lost it’s status as New York City’s playground.

Stop and Shop will open near the Arverne-By-The-Sea development, a bucolic new community made up of large apartment buildings and one and two-family homes.  The white and sea-foam colored homes are built on streets with names like Sandy Dune Way, and overlook the Atlantic Ocean and the longest urban boardwalk in the country.  Homes are still being built on the land that had been abandoned for decades, land that was considered a dividing line between the two edges of the peninsula.

The plans for the development were unveiled in early 2001, and developers promised new shops, a new elementary school, and a transit hub.  Local residents hailed the promise of new businesses and the new look for the dark, blighted area.  The homes came up quickly; the commercial portion, including the Stop and Shop, took a bit longer.

“The community is very excited,” said Jonathan Gaska,  the District Manager for Community Board 14, which covers the area.  “It’s long awaited, and will provide much-needed jobs and also another choice for Rockaway residents when they buy food.”

For years, residents have had limited options for food.  The two closest supermarkets, a Waldbaums and a Key Food, are two and three miles from the new development on the western edge of the peninsula.  Those living in the neighborhoods of Far Rockaway, on the eastern edge, had even fewer options.  There are smaller grocery stores on Mott Avenue and Beach Channel Drive, two main commercial streets, but no full-service supermarket, with fresh produce and a pharmacy.

“You have to provide basic community services for an area to grow,” said Jack Friedman, of the Queens Chamber of Commerce.  “The small model of a supermarket doesn’t do the job anymore.”

Amy Murphy, the Director of Marketing and External Communications for Stop and Shop, said the company found many residents traveled off the peninsula–crossing toll bridges and county lines–just to buy their groceries.

“Residents are driving to Nassau County or Brooklyn or Forest Hills,” she said.  Stop and Shop plans to stock the shelves with ethnic food for all the demographics of the peninsula, stocking Caribbean produce and Kosher meats.  There will also be a pharmacy and prepared food section.

Those already living in Rockaway were used to the services–or lack there of–in their neighborhood.  Many who were attracted to the new development  by the promise of brand-spanking-new everything, though, had a harder time facing the fact that things just take longer in the land many call the Sixth Borough of New York City.

The Stop and Shop opening will be the first of many long-awaited openings for the delayed development.  The first YMCA on the peninsula, which broke ground in 2002, will start construction in early 2011.  The transit hub and the 600-seat public elementary school should be completed around the same time.

“We’re excited to be part of a really unique redevelopment efforts,” said Murphy.  “A community isn’t complete until you have a full service supermarket that the residents can rely on.”