Urban Market
Opened: September 12, 2026
A couple months after the opening of the Urban Market in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, another has opened its doors: the Sugar Hill location in Harlem. You might know Sugar Hill for its cultural history (not to mention the jazz song "Take the A Train," whose lyrics say that you have to take the A train to get to Sugar Hill). In fact, the A stops at 145th and St Nicholas -- hence the lyrics -- and that corner now has a brand-new supermarket, the Urban Market of Sugar Hill. It looks like this store is a little over 10,000 square feet at ground level, but storage and prep space are in the basement, so it's a fairly hefty size for this urban neighborhood. A very tiny Foodtown is a couple blocks north and a much larger Foodtown, formerly a Pathmark, is about three blocks east.
We enter Urban Market on the right side, with produce taking up most of the front of the store. Because it's very deep and narrow, the produce department is mostly in front of the grocery aisles. Dairy takes up the rest of the first aisle, extending onto the back wall and then into the last aisle on the left side. There's an alcove in the back-left corner that has the meat department, and another in the front-left corner that has the deli and frozen foods. Just four grocery aisles, though, because of how narrow the store is.
This space wasn't always a supermarket -- in fact, until very recently, it was a bank. So everything in here is new, since there wasn't anything to work with. Above, you can see a railing -- that's where a passage to the basement is.
This store had its soft opening a week ago today, and it's still working up to a grand opening. It looks pretty darn finished to me, so I'm not sure what's still to come. I thought this store looked fantastic, and it's extremely complete for its rather small size. The Foodtown to the east, which is over 40,000 square feet, of course has more offerings. But it's a bit rundown these days, as it only got a small remodel when the current owners took over from Pathmark. This truly feels like a brand-new supermarket -- and that's a good thing, clearly, because it is a brand-new supermarket.
The alcoves with meat and deli/frozen have a lower ceiling.
I'm not sure who owns this Urban Market, and each Urban Market is independently owned and operated (as is the case for all Key Food stores).
The store's front wall doesn't really have windows out to St Nicholas Ave -- I think there's other storefronts covering part of that area -- but the windows on the side of the store are great, and help it feel more open despite it being small with high shelves.
Opened: September 12, 2026
Owner: unknown
Previous Tenants: bank
Cooperative: Key Food Stores
Location: 700 St Nicholas Ave, Manhattan, NY
Photographed: September 17, 2026
The registers are kind of jammed up into this corner. In Manhattan, obviously, you don't have the luxury of space nor the ability to have every retail store be a perfect, open rectangle. But it's nice to see that they've been able to build out a beautiful new supermarket with a lot to offer in this small, kind of unusual space. Here's a look at the weekend's other posts!
Saturday
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