The former Pathmark supermarket on New Hyde Park Road sits locked, empty and dark, waiting for a makeover.
The store was one of several on the North Shore the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. sold to WakeFern Food Corp., the parent company of ShopRite, this fall after announcing it was ending its supermarket operations.
But about a mile-and-a-half away, the doors are open and the shelves fully stocked at the newest Foodtown store, a smaller supermarket where shoppers can easily get in and out with a few items, the owners said.
“If you walk into a 50,000-square-foot store and you ask the guy, ‘Where’s the milk?,’ you can’t even find anybody,” said co-owner Joe Paravati, 68. “ But in our store, you’ll find the dairy man, you’ll find the produce guy — they’re always around.”
Paravati and Angelo Avena, business partners since 1987, own six Foodtown stores together, including one on Jericho Turnpike in Floral Park.
They leased the store at 2046 Lakeville Road in North New Hyde Park, formerly a Cross Island Fruit market that Paravati said was run down, in June 2014 and gave it a major renovation. It opened just before Thanksgiving in November.
The pair also hired a chef and team of food consultants to create menus of prepared dishes shoppers can take home. They’ve also enlisted a Long Island distributor, Holtsville-based J. King’s Food Services Professionals to supply ingredients.
They made these moves because “people want more than just a supermarket,” Avena said.
“Hopefully we’ll give the people what they want for lunch, for dinners, besides buying their apples and pears,” he said.
The new Foodtown store follows a shift in the industry towards “more boutique” supermarkets where customers can make more frequent trips to cross off shorter shopping lists, said Jerry Baldassaro, incoming president of the Greater New Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce.
Such markets are also more connected to and involved with the neighborhoods around them in ways larger chain stores aren’t, he said.
“Those big boys, they really don’t keep it local,” Baldassaro said. “They don’t do what these guys do. They’ll donate time, they’ll donate money, they’ll donate raffle prizes and that kind of stuff, because that’s who they are.”
Vinny Gangi said he prefers bigger supermarkets, such as the former Pathmark at 2335 New Hyde Park Road that’s just south of his North New Hyde Park home.
That store is set to undergo an “extensive” renovation and reopen as a ShopRite in March or April, WakeFern spokeswoman Karen O’Shea said.
Like Foodtown, the new ShopRite will offer freshly prepared dishes, as well as a salad bar, sushi and sandwiches, O’Shea said. It will also house a dietitian whom customers can visit in the store.
“The community can expect a wonderful new ShopRite store with a broad array of groceries and fresh produce and services that our ShopRite customers have come to expect,” O’Shea said.
Meanwhile, Gangi’s been doing most of his grocery shopping at a nearby King Kullen store, but said he would consider Foodtown for quick trips. “You get in, you grab it and you’re gone,” he said.
Foodtown’s managers have so far been “100 percent” as neighbors, said Bill Cutrone, president of the Lakeville Estates Civic Association. They thanked and promptly repaid him when he fixed a fence behind the store.
Cutrone said the new store will be “fantastic” for local shoppers, who won’t have to travel far or brave crowds at the nearby Stop and Shop, as some have since the Pathmark at closed in late October.
“We’re actually looking forward to the new owners of Pathmark, cause that store was kind of decaying years ago,” he said.
