Mayor: Economy to blame

Mount Vernon Mayor Clinton I. Young Jr. said a neighborhood supermarket”™s closing less than a year after it opened amid public fanfare can be blamed on the economy rather than city officials.

Young was responding to recent claims in the Business Journal by Salvatore Gizzo, president of Fleetwood Food Corp., that city officials”™ approval delays and failure to complete promised improvements to a city parking garage led to the failure of Gizzo”™s Key Food supermarket, which opened only eight months ago at 42 W. Broad St. in Mount Vernon”™s Fleetwood district.

Gizzo said he was approached by Young to convert his 11,000-square-foot Brazilian restaurant to a supermarket after the Fleetwood A&P store closed in 2009, leaving the neighborhood without a grocery within walking distance for residents. Gizzo, after investing $2.5 million in the conversion, closed the store this month after filing for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

His attorney, Jonathan S. Pasternak, said the grocery store owner will sue the city for “millions” in bankruptcy court for breaking a license agreement that gave Key Foods exclusive parking rights in one area of the city garage and included various street and garage improvements by the city. Gizzo said the dungeon-like city garage was not used by potential shoppers and kept away customer traffic from his nearby Key Food store.

Young, though, said customers at other Fleetwood businesses ”“ including Harvest Food Market, a rival to Gizzo”™s store that opened near the former A&P site ”“ use the city garage. “They”™re still in business,” he said of those merchants.

“I”™m very sorry that the business did fail,” Young said of Key Food. “The market was really wanted by the community.”

Young said Gizzo is “a great businessman, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for his business savvy”¦I would be inclined to believe unfortunately he”™s a victim of the economy.”