Store To Open ‘Sometime Next Year’
By Dennis Holt
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN — It will be challenging for other retailers who plan to open a new shop in downtown Brooklyn to match the “debut” of Trader Joe's on Thursday.
A 10-member steel drum band called Jahpan led a march of dignitaries (all ensconced in Hawaiian- type shirts), members of the press, and those curious, from Borough Hall down Court Street to the former Independence Bank building on Court and Atlantic, the new home of Trader Joe's.
When the crowd entered the staid and dignified banking floor, the band banging away, one thought of previous dignified bankers stirring perhaps in their graves at this frivolous gang of people dancing to something other than interest rates.
There is actually banking still going on in this Sovereign bank, but come next week what's left will move across the street to the CourtHouse retail space on the opposite corner of Court and Atlantic.
All this fun and games was to serve as the official announcement that Trader Joe's was going to take all the space of the old bank building for its first Brooklyn store. (It has a store in Union Square in Manhattan).
To those who know, Trader Joe's is a most unusual “neighborhood grocery store,” as it calls itself, with something for just about everyone and every price range. It has become one of those “in” places like Fairway and Whole Foods, both of which are or will be in Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn business leadership has been “after” Trader Joe's for years, but as Jim Poppe, vice president of the company said, “We're very careful where we go and this opportunity to come to downtown Brooklyn and to these residential neighborhoods was a golden opportunity.”
Trader Joe's opened its first domestic store in 1958 in Pasadena, California and now has more than 275 stores in 23 states. (The Hawaiian motif Thursday was because the first Trader Joe's sort of opened up in the South Pacific by a guy named Joe Colon; that first place probably didn't have 100 cheeses in stock).
Poppe couldn't pin down an exact opening date for the new store except to say “sometime next year,” because of all the work that has to be done on the interior (The exterior is landmarked).
The parade was led by Borough President Marty Markowitz, state Assemblymember Joan Millman, city Councilmember Bill de Blasio and Jed Walentas, principal of Two Trees Management, which owns the building.
Two Trees plans to build a new apartment building in the parking lot behind the bank on Atlantic Avenue. There was excavation work underway in that lot on Thursday.
CAPTION: From left to right are building owner Jed Walentas; Jim Poppe, regional vice-president of Trader Joe’s; Assemblmember Joan Millman; city Councilmember Bill de Blasio and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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