L+M Development Partners announced the grand opening of Urban Market of Williamsburg, the neighborhood’s largest full-service grocery store. Located in a new mixed-income, mixed-use building at 11 Broadway, the 16,000-square-foot store will be the only full-service grocery for residents in the South Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. Rob Morea of Great Jones Realty, the tenant representative in the deal, brokered Urban Market’s lease of the space from L+M.
Urban Market offers traditional grocery and household products, as well as local and specialty items. The hybrid store will feature over 4,000 square feet of fresh produce, especially locally sourced and organic products, in addition to a large gourmet deli with a Kosher section, an extensive cheese department, a full-service seafood department, and a variety of prepared food options. The store will also provide free parking in the 20 spaces next to the store as well as two hours of free parking in the underground garage with a purchase. Urban Market’s owners and operators, Colin Xie and Jason Chung, have over 30 combined years of experience in the grocery business and currently own and operate stores in Forest Hills and Far Rockaway.
Financing for Urban Market comes in part from the New York Healthy Food & Healthy Communities (HFHC) Fund, a $30 million fund capitalized by the Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group (Goldman Sachs), Empire State Development (ESD) and administered by the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF). Established in 2010, the HFHC Fund provides capital grants and loans to expand the healthy food offerings in underserved neighborhoods throughout New York State.
Urban Market will occupy commercial space on the ground floor of the building at 11 Broadway, an L+M development that was completed in April 2013. Utilizing creative public-private partnerships, L+M, partnered with New York City’s Housing Development Corporation and financing partners Goldman Sachs and Citibank to transform the property into a mixed-income building with space to house a much-needed grocery store to offer fresh food to the local community – which was lacking a supermarket due to high land and development costs.
“This project is a model for successful, holistic community development, offering a combination of residential and commercial space that will truly contribute to the fabric of the neighborhood,” said Ron Moelis, CEO of L+M Development Partners. “Bringing in a community-focused grocery tenant like Urban Market to the development was an integral part of our vision for the building, and we are eager to see how this exciting new store will transform the retail landscape of Williamsburg’s Southside.”
The 11 Broadway mixed-use development contains 20,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and 160 rental apartments. The financing includes a mix of public and private sources, including debt and equity from Goldman Sachs and L+M, NMTC allocations from the New York City Economic Development Corporation, Citibank, and United Fund Advisors, and a subordinate loan and tax-exempt bonds issued by the New York City Housing Development Corporation. The NMTC allocation from EDC and United Fund Advisors is part of an initiative to bring fresh food to underserved communities throughout the five boroughs, known as Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH).
