One Manhattan Square and the Long Wait for Groceries

From the Manhattan Bridge, One Manhattan Square announces itself in reflective glass. Its repeating facade gives the tower something of a cheese grater’s texture, an unusually conspicuous addition to the Two Bridges waterfront. But the building’s most revealing feature is closer to the sidewalk: a supermarket that returned more than eleven years after its predecessor closed.

The story connects three very different kinds of space. There is the luxury condominium tower, with an elaborate collection of private amenities. There is the shorter affordable apartment building beside it. And there is the grocery store, serving a neighborhood whose needs continued throughout the years between demolition and replacement.

Together, they raise a question that a skyline photograph cannot answer: when a development transforms a neighborhood, who gets the improvements, and when?

Where it is

Brooklyn Fare Kitchen & Market: 227 Cherry Street, Two Bridges, Manhattan.

The development’s separate affordable apartment building stands at 229 Cherry Street.

Before the tower, a neighborhood staple

The Pathmark at 227 Cherry Street opened in 1983 as part of a neighborhood urban renewal project. By the time its closure was announced in 2012, it had served the area for nearly thirty years. Residents and elected officials fought to preserve it, but the store closed on December 21, 2012. Extell bought the property and Pathmark’s lease the following spring, according to the New York City Food Policy Center at Hunter College. Hunter College’s account documents both the closure and the campaign surrounding it.

A supermarket’s value is easy to underestimate if another one is a convenient walk away. For people carrying heavy bags, managing a disability or shopping on a limited budget, distance changes the practical cost of food. Losing a familiar store can mean longer trips and fewer opportunities to compare prices or buy everything in one stop.

These were documented concerns in Two Bridges. In October 2014, Manhattan Community Board 3 described Pathmark as the area’s only full-service affordable supermarket. Its resolution identified seniors, low-income households and residents with disabilities as particularly affected, and called on Extell to honor its verbal commitment to provide an affordable replacement. This was a demand for an essential neighborhood service. Community Board 3’s resolution makes that distinction clear.

The former store was demolished in 2014. A low building associated with everyday errands would give way to a development organized around a very different proposition: buying a home with an exceptional view.

Two buildings, one bargain

The development’s housing arrangement made that change especially contentious. Beside the condominium tower, the 13-story building at 229 Cherry Street provided the affordable component of the project.

The distinction between 205 apartments and 204 affordable rentals matters here. A planning document filed with the city identifies 205 total apartments at 229 Cherry Street, of which 204 were affordable to households earning no more than 60 percent of area median income. It also states that the building satisfied the zoning lot’s affordable housing requirement for an optional floor-area bonus. In practical terms, the affordable housing helped the development qualify to build more floor space. The city-filed planning document describes that relationship.

The original housing lottery advertisement confirms the 204 available rentals. It also identifies several overlapping programs: Inclusionary Housing, an anticipated 421-a tax exemption and state-administered Low Income Housing Tax Credits. These were distinct mechanisms supporting the project, rather than a single catchall permission to build taller. The official lottery notice lists the programs and the building’s amenities.

The resulting apartments were a substantial housing benefit. But their placement in a separate structure made the public bargain visible in the architecture. Affordable homes helped support the larger development while remaining physically apart from its signature tower.

What the separate entrance represents

Calling this arrangement a “poor door” captures the criticism, although a separate affordable building is more extensive than a second entrance to a shared lobby. The division operates at the scale of the whole development: different buildings, different arrival experiences and different amenity packages.

Community Board 3 formally objected. In April 2017, it voted against supporting the project’s 421-a partial tax exemption application, citing its opposition to separating affordable housing into another building or providing a separate door when public resources supported the development. That was the board’s position on the application, rather than a final determination of the tax benefit. Its meeting minutes record the objection explicitly.

At 229 Cherry Street, the lottery notice advertised a landscaped terrace, fitness center and lounge. The condominium tower’s advertised offerings occupy another category: more than 100,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor amenities, including a basketball court, two-lane bowling alley, swimming pool, children’s wading pool, cold plunge pool, theater and gardens with a tree house. These features appear on the development’s own amenities page.

The disparity explains why the argument persisted beyond the entrance itself. The affordable building provided homes and shared facilities, but the tower marketed an expansive private world. Both belonged to the same development story; they offered sharply different versions of life within it.

The supermarket finally returns

Brooklyn Fare held its official grand opening at 227 Cherry Street on May 6, 2024. The replacement supermarket occupied roughly 25,000 square feet at the base of One Manhattan Square. Reporting from the opening described a broad selection of produce, meat, seafood and other groceries, with prices ranging from affordable sale items to more expensive offerings. The Village Sun’s opening report supplies the date and that qualified assessment of prices.

Its arrival restored a major grocery destination to the site. It did not establish that every household could shop there as comfortably as at Pathmark, nor could it recover the years residents had spent finding alternatives.

That interval is central to understanding One Manhattan Square. A replacement can satisfy a long-standing demand while still arriving painfully late. An affordable building can deliver useful homes while prompting legitimate questions about separation. A tower can bring investment and remain a symbol of unequal access to its benefits.

The reflective facade makes the development easy to recognize. The supermarket entrance offers a better measure of its relationship with Two Bridges: an everyday necessity, restored after an extraordinary wait.

Sources

• New York City Food Policy Center at Hunter College: Pathmark background and Lower East Side closure
• Manhattan Community Board 3: October 2014 supermarket resolution
• City-filed planning document: 229 Cherry Street units and floor-area bonus
• NYC Housing Connect: Official 229 Cherry Street lottery advertisement
• Manhattan Community Board 3: April 2017 tax exemption resolution
• One Manhattan Square: Official amenities
• The Village Sun: Brooklyn Fare supermarket opens in Two Bridges