(Photo: Danielle Walsh)
First Brooklyn’s Union Market comes to Houston Street and now this: Westside Market — the family-owned supermarket chain known, among other things, for its funny cheese labels, is opening its first eastside store. According to a release, the bi-level store at 84 Third Avenue, on the corner of East 12th Street, will occupy 18,871 square feet in a new 9-story luxury rental building. That would be the Karl Fischer-designed building that caused Nevada Smiths to have to close its original location. Construction should be completed by early summer 2014.
Westside has four locations, most of them Upper West Side-ish. So why did George Zoitas, whose Greek-immigrant father John Zoitas founded the store in 1965, decide to open his fifth location in the East Village? The press release cites “a gap in the market for food retailers in the area” and, er, doesn’t mention anything about the Trader Joe’s a couple blocks away.