A Bronxville landlord claims that the village’s ACME supermarket owes $172,482 for contaminating soil under its parking lot next to the store.
GA Family-Bronxville Holdings accused ACME of negligence and breach of contract, in a complaint filed Nov. 9 in Westchester Supreme Court, stemming from renovations in the parking lot.
The landlord says it had to cover the costs of cleaning up contamination from a ruptured underground storage tank and removing another underground tank.
ACME failed to do a proper investigation before digging up the parking lot, according to the complaint, or comply with governmental regulations.
The media relations department for Albertsons Companies, ACME’s parent company in Boise, Idaho, did not respond to an email asking for its side of the story.
GA Family, affiliated with Mandrake Capital Partners, Manhattan, bought the property at 12-14 Cedar St. for $8.5 million in 2014, according to Westchester property records, and assumed the lease from the previous landlord.
ACME has operated the market since November 2015, when it took over the lease from the bankrupted A&P markets.
In 2019, ACME installed dry wells for handling stormwater in the parking lot. A 250-gallon underground storage tank was damaged during the work and released heating oil into the soil.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation responded, the complaint states, and required the landlord to clean up the mess and also remove a 10,000-gallon tank under the parking lot.
The landlord claims that ACME is responsible for damages inside and outside of the building and that it violated the lease by not giving prior notice or receiving approval for the work.
ACME agreed to reimburse the landlord for the $125,248 spent on remediating damages from the small tank, according to the complaint, “but has failed to do so.”
And if not for the leak from the small tank, the landlord argues, it would not have been required to spend $47,237 removing the larger tank.
The landlord is represented by Manhattan attorney Jeffrey Klarsfeld.
