Landmark Building Will Be Home To a Different Kind of ‘Green’
By Dennis Holt
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN — The Eagle has learned that Trader Joe’s will soon be trading in Brooklyn at the corner of Court Street and Atlantic Avenue, a place where passbooks rather than shopping carts used to be the norm.
Although none of the principals are ready yet to make an official announcement, several sources report that Trader Joe’s, an upscale supermarket chain focusing on specialty items, will take all the space within the former Independence Savings Bank building now owned by Two Trees Management.
Long coveted for the new Downtown Brooklyn, Trader Joe’s opted to open its first Brooklyn store — its second in New York — at the juncture of three affluent brownstone neighborhoods: Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill.
Trader Joe’s, with outlets in 23 states, touts itself as a “neighborhood grocery store” with fare like “imported cheeses, organic produce and hand-tossed pizza from Italy.”
As shoppers from the Union Square store say, the store can be both cheap and expensive, “depending on what you’re looking for.”
The Court-Atlantic space became available from Two Trees almost by accident. Originally, the developer planned to build a new apartment building in the parking lot behind the bank building and link it to that building. The bank building would then also be converted to condos.
For a variety of reasons, a decision by the Landmarks Preservation Commission made it impossible for that link to be created and also made any housing conversion of the bank impossible. The new building will, however, be built.
Two Trees began marketing the large space to retailers, and several companies expressed interest. The Eagle has not yet been told how Trader Joe’s involvement came about.
For the neighborhood, this is a welcome development. The closest supermarket is a small Key Food store on the corner of Clinton Street and Atlantic Avenue, a block away. There is a larger Met Food store, but it is located at Baltic and Smith streets, several blocks away.
A Trader Joe’s would not only answer a known need, but its commercial novelty would also be a draw. And it would also contribute to the boom on Atlantic Avenue, a boom to which Two Trees has already contributed with its CourtHouse apartment building.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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