Here’s what it takes to keep a thriving, homegrown business with good -paying jobs in the five boroughs when the company is looking to expand: $128 million worth of state and city tax breaks, grants and other financing.
Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg vowed to pony up that amount in a successful effort to beat back New Jersey’s bid to lure online grocery seller Fresh Direct across the river. The package makes sense, but the need for it is still damning.
Founded in 1999 on Roosevelt Island, Fresh Direct started with little more than a catchy name and the idea of harnessing personal computers to fit food shopping into supermarket-short urban lives. Click, and it shall be delivered.
The company now employs 2,000 people, 97% of them New Yorkers, and operates out of a Long Island City delivery hub. To keep growing, locally and outside the metro area, possibly in Boston and Philadelphia, it needs to build a larger plant.
The location will be the Harlem River railyards. The price tag will be $100 million, with the cost eased by city and state aid that is contingent on construction and the hiring of 1,000 additional workers.
City and state officials project that the deal will generate $255 million in economic benefits for the city over a quarter-century. They also estimate that the positions saved and created will pay an average of $35,000 a year, adding an annual payroll of about $100 million to the country’s poorest congressional district — which, not coincidentally, is in the county with the highest unemployment rate in the state.
The numbers add up to positive on the public’s side of the ledger, and it’s heartening that Fresh Direct will not join the glum list of companies, such as Stella D’oro, Old London Bakery, Wonder Bread and Sabra, that have packed up and left seeking lower costs and ease of expansion.
May Fresh Direct deliver its pledged jobs, along with plenty of groceries, proving this substantial investment worthwhile.
