Food Emporium Sale to Close Sept. 22; Buyers Seek Net-Lease Tenant

The Food Emporium supermarket on Ninth Avenue and 55th Street will shut down September 22 but the one-story grocery will not be razed to make way for a residential building. Despite published reports, the new owners will seek out a net-lease tenant to keep the building in the black while the economy stabilizes and ongoing developments in the area are completed.

The buyer is local real estate investment firm Altman/Burrack Partners LLC, an affiliate of Murray Hill Properties. Partners Earle Altman and Steven Homstock tell Globest.com that the sale will close on September 14 but that no date for shutting down the supermarket has been set. But a draft press release obtained by GlobeSt.com states that the 62-year-old grocery store “will be closing its doors on September 22nd.”

The document, dated September 27 and originally faxed from Murray Hill Properties offices, names Altman and Homstock as well as Gregg Schenker and Joseph Del Vecchio as buyers and claims “a number of quality tenants are actively working on designs to decide how to best utilize the existing space and lot, which contains approximately 30,000 sf.” The release says the property will be available “as is” at $1.5 million net per annum, or $50 per sf on a long-term lease.