New York City taxpayers already committed $25 million to redevelop La Marqueta in East Harlem nearly a decade ago. Now Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants another $30 million to build a city-owned grocery store on the same site, and he never mentioned the earlier investment when he rolled out his plan last month.
The combined price tag: $55 million in public money for a single stretch of Park Avenue real estate beneath the Metro North tracks. The grocery store itself would cover just 9,000 square feet. Industry executives say a private-sector build-out of that size in Manhattan would cost roughly a third of what the mayor is proposing.
The overlap between the two taxpayer-funded projects, and the silence surrounding the older one, raises pointed questions about transparency, cost discipline, and whether City Hall is layering public dollars on a site that has already consumed years of planning with little to show for it. The New York Post first reported the overlap, detailing how the NYC Economic Development Corporation's pre-existing redevelopment plan and Mamdani's new grocery store initiative now run in parallel at La Marqueta.
La Marqueta stretches from East 111th to East 119th Street under the elevated tracks on Park Avenue. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia opened it in 1936 as a home for pushcart vendors. It has been a fixture, and a chronic headache, of East Harlem civic life ever since.
The EDC approved a $25 million redevelopment plan for the market roughly a decade ago. A 2017 version of that plan envisioned a playground, a dog park, outdoor seating, and a market offering "fresh produce, grocery items, prepared foods, and public seating in a food hall environment." Funds were committed through the EDC, the City Council, and the city's Neighborhood Redevelopment Fund.
Then came delays. The pandemic froze non-essential city projects. An MTA capital improvement project on the Park Avenue Viaduct, which started in 2023, disrupted the site further. The $25 million plan sat idle.
Enter Mamdani. Last month, the mayor announced a $70 million program to open five city-owned grocery stores, one per borough. The East Harlem location at La Marqueta would eat $30 million of that total, nearly half the entire citywide budget, for a store at the market's north end between East 117th and East 119th Streets.
Anthony Pena, president of the National Supermarket Association, told the Post that Mamdani never mentioned the EDC's pre-existing project when he unveiled his plans. Pena said city officials have "not been transparent and open about anything they are doing."
That is a damning charge from the head of the trade group that represents the very industry the mayor's plan would displace. And the numbers back up the concern. Mamdani's record of broken promises during his first 100 days in office makes the lack of disclosure fit a pattern rather than look like an oversight.
On May 18, Mamdani announced a separate public grocery store for the Bronx, a 20,000-square-foot facility in Hunts Point, set to open next year inside a residential development at the former Spofford Juvenile Detention Facility, which closed in 2011. That store is part of the same $70 million program.
Do the arithmetic. If the East Harlem store absorbs $30 million of the $70 million pot, the remaining four boroughs split $40 million, roughly $10 million per store. The Bronx location will be more than twice the size of the East Harlem store at a fraction of the cost.
Pena put it bluntly:
"They are going to spend $10 million on a 20,000-square-foot store and $30 million on a 9,000-square-foot store. There is a massive disconnect right now and there are more questions than answers."
He also noted that a 9,000-square-foot grocery store in Manhattan would typically cost about one-third of what Mamdani is proposing. That would put a realistic price around $10 million, not $30 million.
Stephen Zagor, an adjunct associate professor of food studies at Columbia Business School, was even more direct:
"The $30 million is an outrageous number by itself. You'd expect the doorknobs and cash registers to be solid gold."
Zagor added that the existence of the older $25 million allocation only deepens the problem. "And to think there is another $25 million allocated years ago for the rest of La Marqueta, which is well past its prime, I'd think they would have to revisit that," he said.
When a Columbia professor and the president of the national grocery trade group both say the numbers are indefensible, the burden shifts to City Hall to explain exactly where every dollar is going. So far, the explanation has been thin. The contradictions between Mamdani's public rhetoric and his actual fiscal decisions are becoming harder to wave away.
The EDC told the Post that the $30 million will cover "the ground-up construction and fit-out of the public grocery store as well as back-of-house needs and parking with EV charging capability." The agency insisted that none of the older $25 million will fund the grocery store, and that the two projects are separate.
That framing may be technically accurate. But it sidesteps the real issue: why taxpayers should feel comfortable with $55 million flowing into a single market complex that has been stuck in planning limbo for the better part of a decade.
The EDC said it "is also working on the redevelopment of La Marqueta's retail market and looks forward to sharing more information soon." That vague promise does nothing to answer whether the $25 million plan will ever produce results, or whether it has simply become another line item that city bureaucrats carry forward year after year without accountability.
Zagor raised another question about the EV charging stations included in the parking lot plan. "Electric vehicles tend to be more expensive so are they catering to a higher-income market?" he asked. "It sounds like they aren't focused on what they are trying to do in serving East Harlem residents."
If the stated goal is food access for a working-class neighborhood, building EV infrastructure for a customer base that overwhelmingly does not drive Teslas is a strange way to spend limited public dollars.
While City Hall stacks plans on top of plans, the people who actually operate at La Marqueta are left guessing. Dimitri Gatanis has run the Urban Garden Center at the market since 2010. In 2023, the MTA's viaduct project forced him to relocate several blocks south within La Marqueta. He lost half his space. Sales dropped.
Now he faces a new uncertainty: a city-owned grocery store that could sell the same products he does.
"Are they going to start selling potted herbs or plants as most grocery stores in the city do? It's all very murky."
Bella Karakas, co-founder of Eterra, a shared commercial kitchen that opened at La Marqueta four years ago between East 113th and East 114th Streets, offered a weary summary of the experience. "The EDC's plans for the spaces have changed so many times," she said.
These are not abstract policy debates. These are small-business owners who signed leases, invested capital, and built customer bases inside a market that the city keeps redesigning around them. Every pivot costs them money and certainty. At a time when federal task forces are scrutinizing hundreds of billions in government waste, a $55 million double-dip at a single market in East Harlem deserves the same level of scrutiny.
East Harlem is not a food desert in the way the mayor's rhetoric implies. More than a dozen grocery stores already operate in the neighborhood. A city-owned competitor, subsidized by taxpayers and exempt from the profit pressures that discipline private operators, would enter a market that is already served.
The National Supermarket Association has raised this concern directly. Private grocers in East Harlem pay rent, taxes, and labor costs without the benefit of $30 million in public construction money. Forcing them to compete with a government-run store is not food access policy. It is government picking winners and losers with other people's money.
And if the store fails, as government-run retail ventures frequently do, taxpayers are left holding the bag on a $30 million build-out with no private buyer waiting in the wings. Mamdani's broader fiscal agenda is already driving investment out of New York; a high-profile retail boondoggle would only reinforce the message that the city values ideological projects over sound stewardship.
The EDC presented its 2017 redevelopment plan to local business executives at a meeting earlier this month. That the agency is still circulating a pre-pandemic document nearly a decade after approval tells its own story about the pace of city government.
Key questions remain unanswered. Will the $25 million redevelopment proceed on its own timeline, or has it been quietly folded into the grocery store project despite the EDC's denials? What is the current status of the MTA viaduct work that has disrupted La Marqueta since 2023? Has any formal review been conducted of whether $55 million in combined public spending at a single site represents responsible use of taxpayer funds?
And perhaps most important: why did Mayor Mamdani fail to mention the existing $25 million commitment when he announced the $30 million grocery store? Omitting that detail from a public announcement is not a minor oversight. It is the kind of selective disclosure that erodes public trust, especially when the price tag is this large.
The mayor's growing list of controversies suggests this is not an isolated lapse in transparency but part of a broader pattern of governance that treats taxpayer money as a political resource rather than a public trust.
Fifty-five million dollars for a single East Harlem market, and the people who run the grocery industry say you could do it for a fraction of the cost. That's not a food access plan. That's a blank check written on someone else's account.
