Is Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s farcical city-run-grocery scheme ever going to be more than a façade that simply serves to score cred with Che-loving TikTokers?
Last week, city Economic Development Corp. bigs took prospective bidders on contracts to run the stores on a tour of . . . a vacant lot in East Harlem.
What a waste: People with real work to do got pony-walked around a patch of asphalt under the Metro North tracks in East Harlem.
Bids to run a Mamdani Mart are supposedly due mid-October, though City Hall has yet to issue remotely enough specs on how the whole thing’s going to work.
The concept has always sounded like something cooked up in a late-night, stoned college-dorm discussion — and still hasn’t been fleshed out much more than that.
So the only reason anyone would enter a bid is as part of some grift . . . or graft.
Team Mamdani’s theorists have imagined they’ll build five stores for $70 million, with the East Harlem spot commanding $30 million of that; industry experts openly laughat that figure as vastly more than what it costs to launch a high-end store in a pricey nabe, not the kind of “affordable” shop the mayor has waved at.
Adding to the absurdity of the Harlem tour is the unsettling apparatchik in charge of the grocery project: dead-eyed Waverly Neer, who blabbered in NPR-voice about how “excited” the project has gotten the Harlem locals.
“Furious” is probably the better word for the locals who already run groceries in the target areas staring at having to face government-backed competition.
The five blocks just around the Harlem site contain 15 bodegas and groceries.
Neer last week pointed to one possible answer: “grants” to support independent businesses near the Mamdani Marts.
The city has “a whole host of levers” it can use “to make sure everyone has equitable and equal access to opportunities here.”
Ah, yes: Subsidize the city-owned store, and also its nearby competitors — and, when their competitors come calling, why not them too?
Light up another J, Mamdani brain trust, and keep on theorizing.
All this serves the mayor in one key way: The grocery noise distracts his fans (and maybe his opponents, too) from all his real-world bungling.
Mayor snubbed at a soldier’s funeral? Pied-à-terre tax mired in confusion? Look over there! Equity! Affordability! Economic justice!
It works because so much of Mamdani’s base has always been about vibes and theater, so New York will continue to hear a lot about these stores, even if we never actually get to see one.
The post How will Mayor Mamdani make his groceries work? First, smoke some more pot . . . appeared first on New York Post.
