Failed grocer says city failed him
A bankrupt supermarket owner recruited by Mount Vernon”™s mayor to open a grocery in the city”™s Fleetwood district blamed the mayor and city officials for his business”™s failure only eight months after its grand opening. He plans to sue Mount Vernon for millions of dollars in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
“They totally, literally stabbed me in the back,” Salvatore Gizzo, president of Fleetwood Food Corp., said of Mount Vernon city officials. Gizzo on March 13 locked the doors on his company”™s 11,000-square-foot Key Food supermarket at 42 W. Broad St. after filing for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains. He expects his New York City landlord, who is owed $30,000 in back rent, to take possession of the building.
Mount Vernon Mayor Clinton I. Young Jr.”™s office did not return a call for comment.
Only last July, Gizzo posed for photos with Young at a ribbon-cutting ceremony outside his Fleetwood store. A line of waiting customers reportedly stretched around the corner on Fleetwood Avenue. But that level of customer traffic apparently was short-lived, and Gizzo claimed the city”™s failure to deliver on promised parking garage, lighting and street improvements kept customers away.
His Key Food store was to replace the Fleetwood A&P Supermarket, one block south at 24 W. Grand St., that closed in early 2009. The former A&P site was converted to a CVSÂ Â Pharmacy. Lacking a supermarket within walking distance for elderly residents, “The entire Fleetwood area was in an uproar,” Gizzo recalled.
Gizzo since 2003 had operated Samba Na Brasa, a Brazilian steakhouse, at the Broad Street address in Fleetwood; he also owns the Surf Club, a wedding reception and events facility in New Rochelle.
With A&P closing, “The mayor came to me one day and he said, ”˜I need a big favor,”™” the restaurateur recalled of a 2009 meeting with Young. “”˜Will you consider turning your restaurant (in)to a supermarket?”™… He said, ”˜I”™ll give you whatever you need to get the thing done.”™”
Gizzo said Young promised to expedite the permit approvals needed for the project.
Gizzo calculated that based on the Fleetwood A&P”™s reported $250,000 in weekly business, his grocery store could take in $50,000 in weekly profits. “It was kind of a no-brainer,” he said of his decision to convert his business.
Gizzo signed a license agreement with the city. The city agreed to restrict a ground-level parking area of its nearby municipal parking garage on Broad Street to Key Food customers and install and maintain lighting and security cameras in the garage, which Gizzo said is “like a dungeon.”
City officials, he said, also agreed to other parking and landscaping improvements designed to make the neighborhood and city parking garage cleaner, more accessible and less darkly menacing for grocery shoppers.
Most of the improvements have not been completed, he said. Another item on the business owner”™s to-do list for the city, repairs to a broken elevator in the parking garage, still had not been made as Key Food”™s last customers this month wandered down aisles of largely unstocked shelves.
“All I know is that everything we were promised by the mayor and the city, we got zero,” said Gizzo, who invested $2.5 million in the business conversion. “I would never have made that investment if we didn”™t have that agreement.”
Gizzo said Young also failed to deliver speedy permit approvals. He said the city took nine months to approve store plans, while he paid $20,000 a month in rent and consultant”™s fees through the delays. “They really stalled it and stalled it,” he said. “They just cost me a ton of money.”
The supermarket owner said he also was hampered by delays in obtaining state lottery, beer and food stamp licenses until recently.
Key Food in 2010 also saw a competitor, Harvest Field Market, open a store one block away at 75 Fleetwood Ave., adjacent to the neighborhood”™s new CVSÂ Pharmacy. As a condition for converting his restaurant, Gizzo said he had an oral guarantee from city officials that no rival grocery of more than 1,500 square feet would be allowed to open in Fleetwood.
Gizzo”™s bankruptcy attorney in Harrison, Jonathan S. Pasternak, in court papers said the new supermarket”™s revenue peaked at $130,000 weekly late last year, but had since plummeted to less than $50,000 a week. Gizzo calculated he would break even at $90,000 a week.
The Key Food owner listed approximately $3.1 million in liabilities against approximately $2.78 million in assets. Two contractors on the supermarket build-out are owed $1.8 million and the store”™s parent company on Staten Island, Key Food Co-operative Inc., is owed approximately $579,000.
Gizzo said the store”™s closing is “thanks to the city that wanted and begged for a supermarket there for one year, two years, and then went totally against us. If I got what I wanted from the city, the supermarket would have made it.”
Pasternak said the Key Food supermarket is for sale and already has attracted several interested buyers. The store could reopen under new management or new ownership, he said.
As for Gizzo, “We”™re not going to reopen,” he said. “We”™re out of business, and that”™s it.”