Original Grocery Tenant: Pioneer Supermarkets
This weekend, we're checking out new stores in some of the most affluent New York City neighborhoods, including Midtown East and Long Island City. The story is very different in Brownsville, one of the lowest-income neighborhoods of the city where nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line. It's one of the least supermarket-dense neighborhoods, too, with just a handful scattered across the community of about 100,000. And it's just lost another supermarket, on the western edge near Crown Heights: this Associated Supermarket, which closed either late last month or early this month.
This building was constructed in 2013 by Walgreens, which closed up shop in 2019. It reopened as a Pioneer Supermarket in the summer of 2022, which converted to Associated (not sure if ownership changed) in mid-2024. Associated then closed within the last few weeks. The store is around 10,000 square feet.
The building is relatively new, as you can see from the outside, but it looks like Walgreens was the first consumer retail-type business on this site. In 1947, there was a Firestone tire store here, then by 1969 it was a car rental agency, then a gas station by 1990. The first two pictures in this post -- with the Associated signage -- are from Tuesday, and the rest are from a May 2024 visit when the store was still a Pioneer.
The supermarket was oriented to face the parking lot, with produce in the first aisle on the left side. Meat was on the back wall, with frozen and dairy in the last aisle on the right side. There was a deli in the front-right corner.
As you can see from these 2024 interior pictures, the store was pretty no-frills. There wasn't really decor or signage inside, beyond aisle markers. From the few pictures online that show the interior of the Walgreens, you can tell that the bones are left over -- probably including lighting and flooring. The interior was perfectly fine but not particularly special. And while more food access is always good in a neighborhood with limited access, like this one, reviews on Google Maps mention high prices and expired food. It feels like there might not really have been a need for this particular store here. A small and rather dated Food Universe (previously an Associated) is a quarter of a mile south, and a larger and nicer Bravo is a couple blocks beyond that. Two (long) blocks south of this store is a newly-renovated CTown, complete with large butcher and seafood counters and a cafe with coffee, fresh juices, and smoothies. Another Associated was briefly a block south of that CTown. So for all the improvements the Associated Supermarket Group has made lately, there are still places where they struggle. At a store like this one, execution wasn't that bad, but there also wasn't much drawing customers here -- that combined with higher pricing in a low-income neighborhood is not exactly a recipe for success.
When I visited back in May 2024, the store didn't feel like closure was impending, but you can see the shelves were not particularly well attended to, especially in a store that didn't seem to be doing that much volume.
Dairy was in the back-right corner, with frozen foods continuing down the rest of the last aisle.
I don't have any information on what might happen to the building -- whether it'll stay a supermarket or become something else. I haven't heard any rumors, either. I'll keep an eye out for any other information, though.
The deli was in the front-right corner, with the registers next to it on the front-end. You can see here again -- there's nothing really wrong with the store, it's bright and clean, but there's not much to attract customers. You also don't see a lot of shoppers in these pictures, and that's a pretty accurate representation. It was very quiet in the store when I visited, and I have to assume the store closed because of slow business and not for other reasons. One other observation here: notice the "sorry, we're closed" sign on the deli. This was at 4 pm on a weekday. Why would you close the deli then? It seemed like there may have only been one employee on the floor at the time of my visit -- a single cashier -- so it was probably poor management that made people hesitant to come.
One entertaining find in the freezer aisle: a package of O Organics mangos, an Albertsons Companies storebrand (probably just shipped from the same supplier).
And on the front end, you can see the single register open. I'm willing to bet those people standing in line probably aren't too happy, and I'm sure if enough people had that experience, they wouldn't want to come here to do their full food shopping. Notice that almost all of them just have an item or two in their hands. When I was at the Food Bazaar just north of here this week, there were plenty of people filling a shopping cart. Same deal when I visited the CTown on 98th Street a while back.
I hate to see any supermarket close, but this one just felt poorly-run and it doesn't surprise me that it didn't make it. An ideal situation would be, of course, that a new supermarket moves in and runs this store better (oh, and speaking of Ideal, there's also a very pleasant Ideal Food Basket five blocks east). But we'll have to wait and see what happens in the future. For now, check out the rest of this weekend's posts here!
Address: 1134 E New York Ave, Brooklyn, NY
Opened: summer 2022
Closed: summer 2024
Previous Tenants: Walgreens (2013-2019)
Later Tenants: Associated Supermarkets (summer 2024-June 2025)
Photographed: May 20, 2024 and July 15, 2025
On the other side of Brownsville, about a mile and a quarter east, is a 50,000 square foot and newly-renovated Food Bazaar. I don't know the extent to which that store pulls customers from this neighborhood, but someone I know who lives in this neighborhood said she and a lot of people she knows in her neighborhood will go there for big shopping because the smaller stores around just don't cut it. There's also a very small Food Bazaar a quarter of a mile north of here.
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