New York won a food fight with New Jersey.
The payoff: 1,000 new jobs.
The Daily News has learned that online grocer Fresh Direct will announce Tuesday it is relocating to the Bronx, not the Garden State.
New Jersey offered the budding delivery giant roughly $100 million in public benefits to come across the Hudson River from its cramped Long Island City headquarters.
But Fresh Direct will instead spend $112 million to build a new base in the Bronx, keeping nearly 2,000 jobs in the Empire State and adding about 1,000 more.
“Fresh Direct is a home-grown success that will now continue to grow and create jobs in New York,” said Gov. Cuomo.
Fresh Direct will receive $130 million in grants, tax breaks and tax credits from the Cuomo and Bloomberg administrations and Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.
The company hopes a new 500,000-square-foot warehouse at the Harlem River Rail Yards will allow it to expand to Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
Fresh Direct expects to open the facility in 2015 and add 1,000 new jobs by 2020.
The New Jersey option put pressure on New York to cut Fresh
Direct a sweet deal. In addition to hefty tax breaks, the firm will net $20 million in capital
investments from the Empire State Development Corp., NYC
Industrial Development Agency, Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp. and
the borough president.
Not everyone was cheering. Bettina Damiani of the watchdog group Good Jobs New York slammed Fresh Direct as undeserving. The company delivers to few Bronx neighborhoods and pays 38% of its workers less than $25,000 a year, she noted.
