A long-vacant supermarket at the Yorktown Green shopping center will be occupied by Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace.
Representatives for the specialty grocer presented their relocation plan to the Planning Board Jan. 10.
Renovation work has begun at 329 Downing Drive, the site of the empty, 45,000-square-foot supermarket, an anchor space that has sat empty for more than 10 years. Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace has outgrown its nearby location at 380 Downing Drive in the Turco’s Shopping Center.
“Restoring vitality to the Yorktown Green shopping center will have a ripple effect throughout our community. I’m pleased the Town Board continues to take significant steps towards filling a huge retail hole left by the closure of Kmart and Food Emporium,” said Supervisor Matt Slater. “The expanded Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace is a clear sign of future investment and an important element in our community’s economic redevelopment.”
Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace is an Italian American specialty grocer founded in 1998 in East Meadow, N.Y., and it is the latest business to express interest in Yorktown Green.
Last January, Oster Properties of Englewood Cliffs, N.J. met with the Town Board to present their concepts for a residential-retail complex that would demolish the defunct, 90,000-square-foot Kmart. The replacement U-shaped building would include 150 units of one- and two-bedroom residences in a four-story building with ground floor retail, underground parking for residents and a small park in the center of the residential footprint. The market-rate housing component includes 84 one-bedrooms and 66 two-bedrooms. Price points for the housing are undetermined.
Oster Properties owns more than two million square feet in northern New Jersey and it manages about 500 apartment units. Oster’s retail holdings include the Foster Village Shopping Center in Bergenfield, N.J.
