About a month ago, we posed the following question: Is Whole Foods to blame for the sorry state of the city landmark on the grocer’s property at 3rd Street and 3rd Avenue? The answer, according to a story in today’s Daily News, is yes. The property’s owner entered into an agreement in 2005 with Whole Foods wherein the grocer was supposed to repair the structure, but the landmark Coignet Stone Company building has been abandoned to the elements for years as Whole Foods fails to make progress on its Gowanus supermarket. “The whole thing is a disaster,” says Richard Kowalski, the building’s owner. Kowalski planned to open an art gallery and gift store in the rehabilitated property. A Whole Foods spokesman is evasive about the supermarket’s pledge to repair the landmark. “We have not been contacted in over a year by … the owner of the building … and we have no information whatsoever regarding the owner’s plans for the building,” spokesman Fred Shank told the Daily News. Our take: Whatever benefits this Whole Foods would bring to the neighborhood and Brooklyn have been greatly overshadowed in the past year or so by the store’s lack of action in Gowanus. The fence at the abandoned toxic site has been destroyed again and again, giving the general public open-access to a potentially harmful property. At the same time, we now learn the grocer has reneged on its agreement to preserve a city landmark. Whole Foods, it’s time to s*&t or get off the Gowanus pot.
Gowanus Landmark Building Caught in Repair Dispute [NY Daily News]
3rd St. Landmark Crumbling; Is Whole Foods to Blame? [Brownstoner]
Obstacles Remain for Whole Foods [Brownstoner]
Whole Foods Fence Saga Continues [Brownstoner]