Fresh Direct Job Vows: At Odds with Environmental Claims?
City Limits
By Neil deMause
Sometime in the next few weeks, a state supreme court judge could issue the first of several rulings on a legal challenge to FreshDirect’s plan to open an 11-acre headquarters in the Port Morris section of the Bronx, which would cost $112 million to build but receive $128 million in city and state subsidies.
The suit, filed in March, charges that the project violates a bevy of rules for government-aided development projects, not least by ducking the requirement for a full environmental review.
But the idling-delivery-truck giant’s attempt to push the project through with minimal public review could turn on a curious detail: When it comes to pushing its project in public, FreshDirect is crowing that its relocation from Queens to the Bronx would allow it to expand its operations and create 1,000 new jobs. Yet the expansion plans — and those new workers — seem to have disappeared when it was time to determine whether the project will bring additional truck traffic to the diesel-choked South Bronx.
