Best Yet Market Inc. tentatively agreed with The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. on Tuesday to purchase the Waldbaum’s at 40 Great Neck Road in Great Neck for $1.5 million.
Best Yet Market, a Bethpage-based family-owned company that operates supermarkets under the name “Best Market,” also agreed with A&P to buy a Waldbaum’s in Selden and Pathmarks in Shirley, Islip, and West Babylon.
“Best Market currently operates 20 stores in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut including 16 communities on Long Island, and we are enthusiastic about the opportunity to serve Great Neck as well,” Best Yet Market President and CEO Rebecca Philbert said in a statement following the agreement. “We look forward to bringing our fresh, healthy, ‘better for you’ brand to new customers and are confident that they will be excited by the transformation our stores represent.”
After two rounds of auctions in October, Great Neck’s Waldbaum’s received no bids, leaving residents, employees, and public officials unsure of the future of the supermarket.
Alejandra Soto, a spokesperson for Best Yet Market, said there was no timetable for when the new supermarket will begin operating.
“There is no timeline for renovations. Each store is going to be looked at on a case-by-case basis,” she said. “Some may be in fantastic shape but just need some fresh painting, but some of them the floors might be chipped or the roof might be leaking, or things can be out of date. It depends on what they find.”
Soto added that as soon as Best Yet Market gets keys to the store, a team will assess what renovations need to be made and how long the store conversion process will take.
Signs posted outside the shopping center in which the store is located announced that Waldbaum’s was closing.
Great Neck Chamber of Commerce President Hooshang Nematzadeh said a lengthy store conversion period would greatly impact surrounding businesses.
“It will have a huge impact to lose a number of visits that the supermarket generates for other stores and businesses,” he said. “It will have a negative impact within the shopping center and possibly across the street.”
Neal Kaplan, the managing partner of Kabro Associates, a real estate development and management firm that owns the shopping center where Waldbaum’s is located, said in October that private negotiations with potential bidders were taking place.
Kaplan was unavailable for comment on the tentative agreement between Best Yet Market and A&P.
Village of Great Neck Plaza Mayor Jean Celender said the village worked hard to find a new supermarket operator and was “thrilled” that a bid was submitted.
“We’ve been talking to the shopping center owner and meeting with prospective supermarkets. We sent packages out and they were one of the stores. I don’t know if that had any effect but we’re hoping maybe it did. We encouraged them to take another look and they submitted a bid,” Celender said. “It’s a complicated court proceeding that’s not anything the village is a party to but we have been following it and have been very proactive to try to encourage supermarkets to want to go in and submit a bid and service the community.”
A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 13 at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains for a judge to approve the sales, according to court documents.
Soto said both parties and the bankruptcy judge agreed on Tuesday that Best Yet Market would attempt to offer employment to at least 25 percent of employees from the current store.
“The agreement that all parties came to with the judge was that Best Market will be making a good faith, best effort of an offer of employment to no fewer than 25 percent of all new employees,” she said.
Soto added that Best Market would hire employees based on who was the best person for the job and not who had been working at Waldbaum’s the longest.
“Employees might be concerned, but again, the job posts will go up and people will apply and the best person will be hired,” she said. “It’s about who the best person for the job is and what the fair pay is.”
A manager, who requested to remain unnamed, from Great Neck’s Waldbaum’s said until an agreement was official, they would not discuss the future of the store and it’s employees.
“Nothing has been satisfied and until then no statement can be made,” she said.
Of A&P’s 51 supermarkets on Long Island, 33 have been bought or bid on, five were closed in October, and 13 remain unsold.
Efforts to reach A&P officials were unavailing.
“To have another operator so fast taking the place and especially a very good operator to come in is fantastic news for Great Neck,” Nematzadeh said. “Then we are not deprived of a supermarket.”
