What Craig knows about NYC wouldn’t fit on a single leaf of his pea shoot sized racist heart

New York already has a version of city-owned grocery stores. Namely, the six markets overseen by the city’s Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit that manages city-owned property to boost economic development. These grocers include Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side, Moore Street Market in East Williamsburg, and others in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens.

Their purpose is not to turn a profit but to provide access to healthy and affordable groceries for underserved communities, according to an Economic Development Corporation spokesperson. These stores are given deep discounts on rent to pass savings on to customers….

People sometimes think of the Essex Street Market as a fancy food hall – and it does have stalls selling $50 balsamic vinegars or exotic alpine cheese. But it also contains a long-running meat market, a fish market, and three grocery stands, including Viva Fruits and Vegetables, which has been run by the same Dominican American family since 2000.

There are five supermarkets within a five-block radius of Essex Market, including a Trader Joe’s and a Union Market. Viva beats them all on produce prices: five limes for $1, clamshells of fresh herbs for $1, two bunches of scallions for $1.50.

“That's why everybody comes here,” said Luci Valle, who has been shopping at Essex Market since 1974. “Because in the supermarket it’s just expensive, very expensive.”

The low prices are by design, according to Luis Vargas of Luna Brothers Fruits and Vegetables, a stall on the other end of the market with similarly low prices.

Asked how he managed to price his goods so well, Vargas replied simply: “The city.”

Essex is one of six public markets still standing from a LaGuardia-era effort to move pushcart vendors off the street in exchange for cheap rent in city buildings. Longtime “legacy” tenants, as the Economic Development Corporation calls them, still enjoy deep rent discounts, while newer vendors pay higher prices that are still below market-rate.

The Economic Development Corporation is a quasi-public nonprofit that manages city-owned land. A spokesperson declined to state if Essex Street Market was profitable. But they confirmed that all the markets pay below-average retail rents for their area. The corporation reviews each vendor’s prices before renewing their lease agreements every few years, they said.

In addition to low prices, Essex Market offers food that’s difficult to find elsewhere, according to Angel Gee, who said she’d been shopping there for decades.

“This is the only place I can come to get all the stuff that I need”, Gee said, whose bag was loaded up with empanada discos and sweet plantains. “I come all the way down from Midtown now just to come here.”

‘The government has been in the food retail business for generations.’