Coming Whenever: Gowanus Whole Foods

pitu

okay, 2008-ish

http://brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol29/29_42/29_42nets2.html

‘Whole’ lot of parking
Whole Foods buys side lot, plans three-story garage
By Ariella Cohen
The Brooklyn Papers



Plans for Brooklyn first Whole Foods supermarket are getting bigger — and the gridlock won’t just be in the grocery aisles.



The epicurean grocer is adding a massive, three-story, 430-car parking garage to its plans for a rooftop lot and a surface lot at its planned mega-store at the intersection of Third Avenue and Third Street on the Gowanus end of Park Slope.



Whole Foods’ glassy 68,000-square-foot complex could attract more than a thousand new vehicles an hour to Park Slope and Gowanus, a traffic expert said.



“If you have a vehicle turnover every 40 minutes, then you have … as many as 1,800 new cars an hour,” said traffic engineer Brian Ketcham.



A similarly sized shopping destination in the suburbs would typically be required to include spaces for 272 cars, he said. But with all its lots, Whole Foods will provide almost three times that amount in an area with fewer drivers.



“They are obviously planning to be a regional destination,” said Ketcham, “and preparing for lots of auto traffic in an area that should be catering to pedestrians and public transit.”



In a memo last week to local planning officials, a Whole Foods spokesman said the garage was added “to ensure that the store does not impact on parking on any surrounding streets.”



But neighbors say the damage has been done.



Third Avenue is also a truck route that will be dramatically affected by Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards plan.



“Traffic is already completely stopped up there with people using Third Avenue so they can avoid Fourth Avenue,” said Marlene Donnelly, a member of Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus.



“Now we are adding hundreds more cars to that, plus all the delivery trucks and all the Atlantic Yards traffic.”



A spokeswoman for Whole Foods said the site’s environmental clean-up would be finished this year and the new store would open in spring, 2008.

quijibo

oh man. gowanus is the new black

shait :oops:

shishkab

thanks for the update-ish, pitu. was just talking about this project a couple of days ago, but i couldn't offer any recent details.

well, Q, looks like your taint is getting less tainty every week. before you know it, you're going to have to change your locale to "taintalicious".

quijibo

shishkab wrote: thanks for the update-ish, pitu. was just talking about this project a couple of days ago, but i couldn't offer any recent details.

well, Q, looks like your taint is getting less tainty every week. before you know it, you're going to have to change your locale to "taintalicious".

done!

bklyngirl

Subject: Re: Coming Whenever: Gowanus Whole Foods

pitu wrote: okay, 2008-ish

http://brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol29/29_42/29_42nets2.html

‘Whole’ lot of parking
Whole Foods buys side lot, plans three-story garage
By Ariella Cohen
The Brooklyn Papers

This is old news. Whole Foods actively had the construction companies shut down by the DOS, and then bought the sites. This was after the original site was declared a Hazmat site. The plan then became to put the market on the new lots, and the parking lot on the hazmat site.

Seeing as they have no permits yet, and both CB6 and FROGG are actively involved in traffic patterns, etc - and very vocal - I wouldn't plan on shopping there in the near future.

Just as an aside. Mackay, the CEO of WFM who was caught posting derogatory info re: Wild Oats, thus lowering their stock price - after which resulted in his buying up Wild Oat. It was recently discovered that he (or a copycat) was posting derogatory information on local boards, like Curbed, Racked, etc., saying the nastiest things about the Fairway.

opossumqueen

Update:
http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/32/27/32_27_mm_whole.html

The grocery chain, known for its high-end food and prices to match, said on Wednesday that it does still hope to come to Brooklyn, but it won’t be at its polluted parcel at the corner of Third Street.
Mac Support Store

“Whole Foods does not have immediate plans to open in Brooklyn,” said company spokeswoman Mara Engel Weleck, who suggested that the land would be sold.

pitu

wow...
that took, what, three years to figure out for WF?
And just when it was about tho become a superfund site

longtimesloper

Ah, too bad, I was so looking forward to going there to overspend on groceries, darn it! Give me another Trader joe's, forget Whole Foods!

So, if they have given up on building there, what will happen with that site?

sir_eccles

LongTimeSloper wrote: So, if they have given up on building there, what will happen with that site?

Oh Mr Ratner...

jamzer

LongTimeSloper wrote: Ah, too bad, I was so looking forward to going there to overspend on groceries, darn it! Give me another Trader joe's, forget Whole Foods!

So, if they have given up on building there, what will happen with that site?

According to Whole Foods, they have not given up on the Gowanus site just yet. Read the comments section for the e-mail exchange between the Brooklyn Paper reporter and the rep from Whole Foods. The Brooklyn Paper is funny sometimes.

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/32/27/32_27_mm_whole.html

whatchuwant

In the NY Post today:
Whole Foods renewed its commitment to opening a store on Third Avenue - a 180-degree turnaround from last week when a spokeswoman for the chain told The Brooklyn Paper that the company had abandoned its contaminated site along the Gowanus Canal.

The company acknowledged that its flack had misrepresented Whole Foods' intentions.

"Certainly, our spokesperson's statement could have been a lot clearer," said Libba Letton, a higher-ranking spokeswoman based at Whole Foods' Austin headquarters than the official who spoke to the Brooklyn Paper last week. "[But] that doesn't change the fact that Whole Foods Market is actively working on plans for a store at the Gowanus site."

Still, the company would not talk about any timeline for the stalled organic grocery, which was originally promised to open in 2006, but has been delayed due to the recession and dangerous levels of underground benzene on the site.

Initially, Whole Foods went on a media blitz after The Brooklyn Paper's story, first demanding a retraction, and then getting Community Board 6 to send out a memo drafted by a Whole Foods top executive, Mark Mobley, that trashed our story as "simply not true."

The company, however, later softened its tone and dropped the ultimatum when The Paper printed the shocking e-mail exchange between its reporter and the spokeswoman.

"Just so we're clear," the reporter wrote, "when … you said that even though Whole Foods plans to eventually open in Brooklyn, they don't plan to build a store at the Third Avenue location?"

"Correct, not at this moment. Thanks Michael," said the response from Mara Engel Wedeck.

When shown the e-mail exchange, Whole Foods said it did not want to assign blame for the communications breakdown, but merely to "make sure the Brooklyn community knows we are still committed to this project," said Letton.

The earlier announcement that the project was being abandoned came on the same day as the end of the public comment period for a federal proposal to declare the canal a toxic Superfund site.

carmen

Mara's in trouble...

But i mean really...why is this such a huge story? The paper is turning this into some sort of scandal. Whole foods is serious business!

jamzer

Interesting enough - Whole Foods took the Brooklyn store off of its list of stores in development. I think they are a bit confused too.

idlewild

I'm not sure I'd build there if I were Whole Foods. In between a costly clean up and a down economy I don't see WF lasting more than three to five years, if that. It really is time to drain the canal and make it a park like they did with the 10th Ave Trestle in Manhattan.

flynn

i believe this , at least for now or anytime in the foreseeable future, is not happening:

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/32/27/32_27_mm_whole.html

edit:

oops, sorry did not see this was already posted. sorries

pitu

oooo, it's 2010 and the news continues to break....

"Whole Foods Site Almost Decontaminated!"
http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2010/02/whole_foods_site_almost_decont.html

eggcream

Now that's not too appetizing, the words Food and Decontaminated in the same sentence.

I can see the headline 10 years from now, hmm, we thought we had it all decontaminated....

bcodsnpkslope

i think they ought to build a few more residential towers there lord knows we dont have enought of that crap popping up in the area

misslo

I work across the street from the site. For what it's worth, they did their cleanup thing under the oversight of the EPA, then split. No work going on their now, and the trailers are gone.

brooklyngigcenter

Misslo wrote: . No work going on their now, and the trailers are gone.

Wow, tornado did a lot of damage!

aquamann

whole foods is terrible anyway. the only thing worse is trader joe's.

germfree!

Aquamann wrote: whole foods is terrible anyway. the only thing worse is trader joe's.

Why?

aquamann

it's a cult. so many people who go there do it because it's what people "like them" are supposed to do. then they pay far too much and think that what they are getting is so much better.

it's not.

it's a place for snobs to be seen grocery shopping by other snobs. that's it.

bluecat

Aquamann wrote: it's a cult. so many people who go there do it because it's what people "like them" are supposed to do. then they pay far too much and think that what they are getting is so much better.

it's not.

it's a place for snobs to be seen grocery shopping by other snobs. that's it.

sheesh with all the things I have to do 'where to be see grocery shopping' is about 1,763 rd on the list.

bcodsnpkslope

bluecat wrote: [quote=Aquamann]it's a cult. so many people who go there do it because it's what people "like them" are supposed to do. then they pay far too much and think that what they are getting is so much better.

it's not.

it's a place for snobs to be seen grocery shopping by other snobs. that's it.

sheesh with all the things I have to do 'where to be see grocery shopping' is about 1,763 rd on the list.
but you see if you recycle thebags and carry junk in em all over then people all over think you just shopped there!! gotta show the trader joes colors!!

aquamann

exactly!

scottb2k

Aquamann wrote: it's a cult. so many people who go there do it because it's what people "like them" are supposed to do. then they pay far too much and think that what they are getting is so much better.

it's not.

it's a place for snobs to be seen grocery shopping by other snobs. that's it.

peanuts

sheesh with all the things I have to do 'where to be see grocery shopping' is about 1,763 rd on the list.

That comment made my day!