Citarella Finally Ready to Fill Empty Store on 125th

After months of rumors about Citarella's intentions for a large vacant warehouse it owns on 126th street, store owner Joe Gurrera announced at the latest Community Board 9 meeting that the company would begin planning a development for the site that would include affordable housing among its possible uses.

Citerella's plans are consistent with the board's hopes for the site.

"There will be affordable housing [on the site], or else Citarella will not be there," said Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, Community Board 9 chair. While the board does not have direct authority over the plot, it acts in an advisory role to New York's Economic Development Corporation, which could pursue legal action against Citarella.

The warehouse, which lies between Amsterdam and Morningside Avenues, was originally purchased by Citarella in 1999 with the intention of building a processing facility with an adjacent store on 125th St. But while the store finally opened on June 2nd of this year, plans for the processing facility have long since been abandoned. Because of the poor state of the building, Citarella instead built its facility in the Bronx.

At a meeting of the board's Harlem Piers and Economic Development committee last Tuesday, Gurrera announced the company's intentions to begin searching for consultants for the project. Their choices will be subject to the approval of the Community Board.

"I've set up a new team because I understand the importance of proceeding with this project. We've proven by opening Citarella on 125th street that we're real people and we're here to stay and sorry we took a little bit longer than expected, but that is done, and I want to move forward now," Gurrera said.

Maritta Dunn, the chair of the committee, while pleased that Citarella "has finally come to the table," says that the community will carefully scrutinize their selection of consultants.

The consultants "must be people who we feel have a sense of how to build in New York City," said Dunn. In many cases, she added, "People from out of New York don't have a clue."

CB9 has been consistently pressing Citarella to develop the property for years, and it was only last March that they began building the store on 125th St. The gigantic property is currently just a massive deadweight for the community, Dunn said.

Gurrera said the delay occurred because of the poor state of the warehouse when Citarella acquired it. According to him, would have cost $8.2 million to get the structure to meet storefront standards, and it was this large sum which prevented the site's previous development. He also laid out a schedule for proceeding with the project, which included choosing an experienced development partner, planning the site, and preparing for any necessary city approval processes. Gurrera pledged to meet with Board 9 regularly and request their input.

Gurrera said that Citarella would seek to build government-subsidized affordable housing, though he could not yet say what the details would be or what percentage of affordable housing the development would include. But "what is very important to us is that housing not be called affordable housing if it isn't," Gurrera said.

Board members emphasized that affordable housing levels for District 9 were lower than affordable housing levels for the city overall. In New York, the designation often means that occupants are middle-income rather than low-income.