After more than five months, North New Hyde Park has its supermarket back.
ShopRite marked its grand opening Tuesday at 2335 New Hyde Park Road, the former home of one of 13 Pathmark supermarkets the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. sold to WakeFern Food Corp. in October.
Jon and Seth Greenfield, the father-and-son proprietors of four other Nassau County supermarkets, gave the store a more than $5 million renovation, opening the shopping area and adding new prepared food stations, Seth Greenfield said.
“They’ve been waiting for this store,” he said.
The reopening returns a large grocery store to a shopping center near the intersection of New Hyde Park Road and Union Turnpike, two thoroughfares lined with offices and medical buildings.
Having a “community stock-up supermarket” there will let New Hyde Park residents shop locally again and could boost business at other stores in the strip mall and at the nearby Lake Success Shopping Center, Greater New Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce President Jerry Baldassaro said.
“It’s a destination, but it’s a local destination,” he said.
When the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. sold and auctioned its Long Island Waldbaum’s and Pathmark stores after declaring chapter 11 bankruptcy last July, the Greenfields eyed New Hyde Park for their fifth supermarket because of its population density and the sales volume of stores there, Seth Greenfield said.
The nearby office and medical buildings add to the customer base at the New Hyde Park Road location, said Jon Greenfield, whose family also runs ShopRites in Plainview, Commack and Bethpage.
The Greenfields started renovating the 65,000-square-foot store in December, Seth Greenfield said. In addition to offering more prepared foods such as soups, sandwiches, sushi and “grab-and-go meals,” ShopRite’s prices are at least 25 percent lower than the former Pathmark’s, he said.
“We knew that people were going to walk in and be surprised at how much they’d been getting basically overcharged before,” he said.
With a “fresher,” less crowded layout, Baldassaro said the renovated ShopRite is an improvement over what was termed a run-down Pathmark.
The store follows a trend of supermarkets offering customers more than what they need to fill their cupboards, such as ready-to-eat meals that save them time, Seth Greenfield said.
“I guess Pathmark, you could say, was the store of the ‘80s and ‘90s,” Baldassaro said. “This is the store of the future.”
ShopRite’s opening comes more than six months after a White Plains bankruptcy court approved WakeFern’s $40 million bid to buy 13s former A&P supermarkets.
The financially beleaguered company also sold North Shore stores to Key Food Stores Co-Operative Inc. and the Stop & Shop Supermarket Corp.
The sales affected many A&P workers in the Mineola-based Local 338 of the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers.
Seth Greenfield said more than 95 percent ShopRite’s 250 employees are members of Local 338 or Local 342 of the Long Island Public Service Employees union.
Some of them worked in the Pathmark store before it closed, he said.
Linda Blake of Roslyn Heights said she likes the “upgraded” store’s fresher produce and larger selection of organic foods. She won’t have to go as far to get the ShopRite variety she likes, she said.
“I don’t have to travel to Plainview now,” Blake said.
