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Plan to modernize NYC's diesel-spewing produce market falls apart under Mamdani
By
Elizabeth Kim
Published Sep 29, 2026
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Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
By
Elizabeth Kim
Published Sep 29, 2026
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For decades, Hunts Point Produce Market in the South Bronx has fed the city while serving as a symbol of environmental injustice. Many of the fruits and vegetables New Yorkers eat are first stored in refrigerated trailers that spew diesel fumes into the poorest, most unhealthy neighborhood in the five boroughs.
By the end of last year, city officials thought they’d finally found a solution. They announced a plan to replace warehouses built in 1967 with a new “state of the art intermodal food distribution facility” that would improve air quality for nearly 13,000 Bronx residents.
But now, the deal — estimated to be worth $650 million — has fallen apart.
What was supposed to have been a major economic development achievement for Mayor Zohran Mamdani has instead led to frustration from Bronx officials who are scrambling to try to salvage a transformative project.
“I've been trying to sound the alarm and try to find ways to get people to pay attention to what is happening,” said City Councilmember Justin Sanchez, who represents the district. “Because it really feels like it has gone unnoticed and just thrown under the rug.”
Some former administration officials blamed Mamdani for taking nearly seven months to appoint a leader at the Economic Development Corporation, the agency in charge of the plan. Others point out that the powerful cooperative of roughly two dozen families who control produce at Hunts Point are hard-nosed, old-school negotiators.
Funding for the project was supposed to come from an assortment of agencies, including $145 million in federal grants and an unprecedented $225 million loan from the U.S. Department of Transportation. But the unraveling of the deal has put the money in jeopardy. The transportation agency recently removed Hunts Point from its list of funded projects in the pipeline.
A rendering of the Hunts Point Produce Market project released by Mayor Adams on his final days in office.
EDC
Gothamist interviewed a dozen officials familiar with the deal and history of Hunts Point. They described a once in a generation opportunity to right an environmental wrong. Three mayoral administrations have sought to tackle the pollution at the market in the South Bronx, where one in five children develop asthma.
The deal quietly unraveled over the summer when the cooperative voted down the plan.
“That's the tragedy here,” said Adolfo Carrión, a former Bronx borough president who served as deputy mayor in the Adams administration. “The food arrives at our tables, in our restaurants, in our supermarkets. It presents well. It plates well. But the journey to get there is what we have to fix.”
The blame game
City Hall veterans say that years-in-the-making projects can face difficult handoffs during transitions – especially between ideological opponents like Mayor Eric Adams and Mamdani. Priorities, attitudes and relationships change when new players arrive at the negotiating table.
The stars appeared to align in recent years after a group of veteran powerbrokers with deep ties to the cooperative and City Hall came together. They included the late Sid Davidoff, the former aide to Mayor John Lindsay, who worked as the cooperative’s lobbyist. Last year Randy Mastro, a former aide to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, joined the Adams administration as first deputy mayor. The former prosecutor had known some of the co-op members since he’d worked under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Mastro had also represented them as their lawyer.
Nate Bliss, a former top EDC official, said he believed the deal would have gone through had Davidoff not died in November. “He would have made sure City Hall paid attention and understood what was happening,” he said. He added that “transitions are hard” between mayors.
Asked about Hunts Point, Mastro — who is representing multiple clients suing the city — declined to speak at length. “I don’t know why the ball was dropped,” he said. “It was on track when we left.”
Carrión said the mayor’s delay in appointing an EDC head “probably contributed” to the deal’s collapse. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has said he wants to steer the agency in a new direction that marries economic development with economic justice.
Mayor Adams spoke at Hunts Point in 2022. He announced a deal to transform the produce market on his final days in office.
Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
Speaking on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show,” Deputy Mayor Julie Su blamed the prior administration for the collapse in negotiations, saying the plan had been “pushed through at the last minute” and without the “buy-in” of those most affected.
The mayor’s office defended its economic development track record.
“Since Day One, EDC has been operating at top speed to advance the Mamdani administration's vision of a city that remains the center of economic growth in America, where public investment delivers material results, businesses can grow and working people can afford to live with dignity,” said Dora Pekec, a mayoral spokesperson, in a statement.
Culture clash
Set on an industrial area stretching more than 100 acres, Hunts Point Market feels a world away from City Hall.
The terminal is a maze of warehouses and storage bays, with trucks coming and going as they serve the city’s demand for produce.
The market is run by scrappy operators getting by on small margins and relentless salesmanship. When he first began working at the market in 1981 at age 16, Danny Kane would watch in amazement as the dealers haggled and hurled insults over the prices of peppers. “It’s a routine they would do every day,” he said.
The market – which is said to be one of the largest in the world – provides up to 60% of the city’s fresh groceries. The products are staples of the city’s food scene: bananas on street carts, avocados at bodegas, mesclun salads at Michelin-rated restaurants and the California-grown honeydew melons used in the U.S. Open’s Honey Deuce cocktail.
“It helps New York be New York,” said Kane, who now leads the 1,400 union members of Teamsters Local 202 who work at Hunts Point. “That’s why you need the market.”
But for decades the market has been using refrigerated storage trailers that run on diesel fuel because operators have run out of warehouse space. According to the city, the site uses up to 1,000 trailers.
Kane said he supported the city’s project. He lobbied for funding from Washington alongside Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents the district. He recalled first hearing rumblings of doubts among the cooperative members in May. As economic development officials presented renderings of the new facility, he noticed the audience shift uneasily in their seats. In hindsight, he said that while Mamdani officials had been engaged and eager to close the deal, they may have wrongly assumed everyone was on the same page.
Three mayoral administrations have sought to reduce admissions at Hunts Point. Then-Mayor Bloomberg spoke with cooperative co-presidents Stephen Katzman and Matthew D’Arrigo in 2011.
Kristin Artz/Mayoral photography office
“It got blown up by logistics,” he said, adding that most of the operators are old-school and wary of change. “That’s what they are used to. That’s what they know.”
Matthew D’Arrigo, a third-generation owner in the cooperative, said city officials didn’t seem to appreciate the operational challenges of running a market during yearslong construction.
Any change to how produce is stored at Hunts Point had massive implications for how the cooperative members do business. Countless deals over produce are made at Hunts Point every day, with co-op members fielding calls from sellers around the country and contacting local merchants to gauge demand.
The city’s plan involved shrinking the footprint of the market from four to two refrigerated warehouses. The modernized warehouses would eliminate the need for the diesel-powered trailers. But it would require building vertically, a shift that would inconvenience buyers, according to D’Arrigo. Customers at the market want to handle the merchandise.
The co-op’s annual rent would have jumped from $4 million to $14 million, an increase that city officials said would have been used to pay off the federal loan and be offset by the lower operating costs.
“We think long and hard before we start spending money,” D’Arrigo said. “The bottom line was the uncertainties and risks of doing the deal outweighed the risks of not doing it.”
The parties, he added, “kept talking past one another.”
Nico Aguilar, an EDC spokesperson, said the Mamdani administration remained committed to addressing the environmental costs of the market. “Our priority goal is to reduce truck traffic and address the nearly 1,000 diesel-powered trailer units onsite,” he said.
But the mayor’s office hasn’t said whether the city will try to revive the plan. Some observers, including Adams officials, said Mamdani should try to bring the parties back together.
“The relationship between the market and EDC is bigger than any one person,” Bliss said. “The parties got very close once, which means the basic ingredients of a compromise are still there.”
Slumped in a chair inside one of the four warehouses that make up the market, D’Arrigo recounted conversations with mayors dating back to Michael Bloomberg. Behind him hung a 1960s subway advertisement featuring two children holding a bouquet of broccoli.
“This easily was the closest we’ve ever gotten,” he said.
But he and the other merchants have moved on.
“I don’t wake up thinking of the deal,” he said. “I wake up thinking about what the price of strawberries is.”
Tagged
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Elizabeth Kim
Elizabeth Kim is a reporter on the People and Power desk who covers mayoral power. She previously covered the pandemic, housing, redevelopment and public spaces. A native of Queens, she speaks fluent Mandarin. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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