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> This sounds extremely non economically viable.

Many things government does are not economically viable. That's why they get left to government.

> Won’t it just cause neighboring stores to close?

The idea is to build these where that has already occurred.

It’s the idea, although they’ve chosen a weird location for that: La Marqueta is about 300 feet from a grocery store (City Fresh on East 116th). So this pilot store will effectively compete with private groceries for business, muddying the strength of any results (in any direction).

(I say this as someone who is broadly in favor of NYC trying to run city-owned groceries in areas that are underserved.)

Of course, there is a term called coercive monopoly. It exists especially in large infrastructure projects where the startup cost is tremendous so only government, or a single entity without the possibility of competition can enter.

Groceries are not one of these. If you have a problem of high grocery costs, there are many better ways to tackle that other opening a government owned store. But it does make for a great photo op.

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