Hunts Point Market Re-Ups, Seeks $320M For New Facility

NEW YORK CITY-Despite tax breaks and incentives offered from across the Hudson River, the 112-acre Hunts Point Terminal Produce Cooperative–the largest wholesale produce market in the world–agreed to a three-year lease extension at its longtime home in the South Bronx yesterday. Under the agreement, a spokeswoman for the New York City Development Corp. tells GlobeSt.com that the city and Co-op officials will negotiate terms over the next nine months that go beyond the three-year lease at the market, located at 772 Edgewater Road.

But even with the lease in place, the pressure isn’t off, says Stephen Katzman co-president of Hunts Point Terminal Produce Cooperative. Katzman says the produce co-op is now looking to construct a new, modernized facility on the site, a project estimated to cost around $320 million. “It still keeps the pressure on us to come up with a design and to go out together with New York City and New York State to find different sources of money at the federal and state level to help us build a facility,” he says. “We are going to need transportation dollars, homeland security dollars and everything else. It is real tough to do when you don’t have a lease, and now that we have a lease, we can do this together and hopefully find enough money to build it.”