New York City has relaxed some reg­u­la­tions in the hopes of bring­ing more gro­cery stores that sell fresh food to the urban areas of the city. New York’s plan­ning com­mis­sion passed the pro­posal that would give tax breaks and ease zon­ing rules.

From the New York Times, writer Diane Card­well details the plan to bring fresh food to the inner-city.

Under a pro­posal the City Plan­ning Com­mis­sion unan­i­mously approved on Wednes­day, the city would offer zon­ing and tax incen­tives to spur the devel­op­ment of full-service gro­cery stores that devote a cer­tain amount of space to fresh pro­duce, meats, dairy and other perishables.

The plan — which has broad sup­port among food pol­icy experts, super­mar­ket exec­u­tives and City Coun­cil mem­bers, whose approval is needed — would per­mit devel­op­ers to con­struct larger build­ings than exist­ing zon­ing would ordi­nar­ily allow, and give tax abate­ments and exemp­tions for approved stores in large swaths of north­ern Man­hat­tan, cen­tral Brook­lyn and the South Bronx, as well as down­town Jamaica in Queens.

“This is about being able to walk to get your gro­ceries in those areas that are really, really under­served and basi­cally have no place to buy fresh pro­duce,” said Amanda M. Bur­den, the city plan­ning com­mis­sioner. Res­i­dents in such areas, she said, have been spend­ing “their gro­cery dol­lars at Duane Reade and CVS on chips and soda.”

The move comes as gov­ern­ments across the nation strug­gle to solve what pub­lic health advo­cates call an epi­demic of obe­sity and dia­betes. Schools have banned sug­ary drinks; law­mak­ers have helped urban farms spread like crab­grass on unde­vel­oped lots; and cities like Los Ange­les and Berke­ley, Calif., have lim­ited the con­cen­tra­tion of fast-food restau­rants in low-income areas.

But the New York pro­posal, adapted from a Penn­syl­va­nia pro­gram that pro­vides grants and loans for super­mar­ket con­struc­tion, is unusual because it employs a mix of zon­ing and finan­cial incen­tives to attract, rather than repel, a nar­rowly defined type of com­mer­cial enterprise.

“It is excit­ing to see that City Plan­ning is tak­ing an ini­tia­tive to address food because the plan­ning pro­fes­sion has really ignored the food sys­tem for the past 100 years,” said Nevin Cohen, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of urban stud­ies at the New School, point­ing out that the Bloomberg administration’s elab­o­rate blue­print to guide future devel­op­ment, PlaNYC 2030, barely men­tions food.

The new zon­ing would break down some bar­ri­ers that gro­cery stores face, said Ben Thomases, the city’s food pol­icy coor­di­na­tor, includ­ing com­pe­ti­tion from drug­stores and other retail­ers that have higher profit mar­gins than super­mar­kets do and can pay higher rents.

Under the pro­posed rules, a res­i­den­tial build­ing with a fresh-food store could be up to 20,000 square feet larger than would nor­mally be allowed, enabling devel­op­ers to make more money by build­ing more apartments.

Smaller stores in cer­tain com­mer­cial and man­u­fac­tur­ing dis­tricts would be exempt from a require­ment that they pro­vide cus­tomer park­ing. And in man­u­fac­tur­ing dis­tricts, devel­op­ers could build stores of up to 30,000 square feet — the cur­rent limit is 10,000 — with­out going through the city’s labo­ri­ous and expen­sive land-use review process.

Like

Unlike