Crown Heights Key Food Owners Considering 'High-End' Replacement

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — The Key Food at 801 Washington Ave. in Crown Heights could be replaced by a "high-end" supermarket in the future, one of the businesses's owners told Patch on Monday.

The current discount food store will stay open until April or May of 2017, the co-owner, who did not wish to give his name, told Patch.

In August, two members of the Othman family, who said they've owned the Key Food property since the 1980s, said they were working on a deal to sell the property's air rights to a residential developer.

The deal, they said, would allow for a new, eight-story residential building to be built on the site — with a new Key Food in its first floor.

But the co-owner who spoke to Patch this week said the Othmans are now considering replacing the low-cost chain with a more expensive one — although he admitted that plan is still very speculative.

According to the family member, Trader Joe's recently explored opening an outpost in an unoccupied property across the street at 856 Washington Ave., but eventually decided it didn't work for them. The family member said he planned on reaching out to Trader Joe's to see if the company would be interested in leasing his ground-floor space once the residential floors are complete. However, the corporation had not yet contacted him about his property, he said.

A spokeswoman for Trader Joe's said Monday that the company does not comment on expansion plans that haven't been finalized.

The Key Food on Washington Avenue was originally slated to close in 2017 and re-open in 2019, according to the Othmans. But that development deal is still being finalized, they said — meaning the supermarket won't close for at least five more months.

Early this November, a coalition of Park Slope community groups announced they had worked out a deal that could keep a low-cost supermarket at 120 5th Ave., another current Key Food site. The heated battle leading up to the deal showed how hard Brooklynites will fight to keep affordable food in their neighborhoods.

Back on Washington Avenue, Richard Mastrota — the pharmacist and owner of Ludwig's Drug Store, which operates out of an adjacent property owned by the Othmans — said Monday that his business is still looking to re-locate to a new location in the neighborhood.

Local Caribbean restaurant The Islands, run out of another Othman-owned space, is already in the process of relocating down the block to 671 Washington Ave.

Pictured at top: The Key Food on Washington Ave. Photo by John V. Santore