Dive Brief:
- Fairway Markets has signed a lease for a 52,000 square foot location about two blocks north of the new World Trade Center. That will put the gourmet grocer within knife-fighting distance of Whole Foods Tribeca store.
- Fairway has been expanding rapidly. The announcement of a lower Manhattan location comes just days after the chain committed to a location in the new Hudson Yards development in Manhattan.
- Fairway, a long-standing institution in New York, operates five stores in Manhattan and 14 in the New York City area.
Dive Insight:
Fairway's new lower Manhattan location will mean a head-to-head fight with Whole Foods—a battle that New York foodies have long wanted to see. However, there's probably enough room for both stores in the area around the new World Trade Center. Whole Foods Tribeca and the new Fairway are in the middle of what has become the fastest-growing community in New York: the space where the neighborhoods of the financial district, Battery Park City and Tribeca collide.
In the area around Ground Zero, those three once-sleepy communities (at least by New York standards) have boomed as federal and state dollars poured in after the terror attacks of 9/11. So many new apartments were built, and so many families moved to the area, that the city has had to build three new public schools in the past five years.
