[Videos below.] Proponents and opponents of the planned expansion of busy Moisha’s Discount Supermarket gathered at last night’s Community Board 12 meeting to discuss the New York City tax break behind the project.
As reported yesterday, Mr. Berachia Binik, manager of Moisha’s, said that a deliberate misinformation campaign has been waged against the store. Reports allege that the $1.93 million tax break from the city’s non-profit Economic Development Corporation (EDC) will be used to build a parking lot for the supermarket, located on the corner of Avenue M and East 4th Street.
Rather, explained Mr. Binik, “we are doubling the store and then having a parking lot on top.” The project would bring the store to 15,000 square feet.
Moisha’s will not receive funds toward the renovation. The city’s FRESH program will extend less than $2 million in tax breaks, spread over 22 years – a detail not emphasized in media reports. The store is left to invest $8 million into the renovation.
According to the EDC, the long-term tax break is hardly a one-sided deal. EDC calculations indicate that helping Moisha’s expand will create around $3.7 million in new tax revenues for the city over 25 years.
The meeting last night was held at the Amico Senior Center at 5901 13th Avenue.
Click on the following links to watch videos of the meeting:
{Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter/Videos filmed by Shimon Gifter}
The third segment was very instructive. One board member says the funds should not go to our community because it should go to a poor community. She lives on the border of BP and Bensonhurst. So first of all, she has noticed what people do to their homes and their designer lifestyles and yes, it makes for bad feeling.
But second, the reason people shop at Moishe’s is that it allows frum Jews to offset some of the huge costs that we face in tuition and housing. So … she’s incorrect. But it is easy to see why people feel that way.
Also notice the man with the huge cross around his neck. Something tells me the local non-Jews feel disenfranchised.
I wish Moishe’s all the hatzlochoh in the world.
painful to watch!!
It’s amateurish when recordings are edited to portray bigotry that is not evident from the videos that are shown. Placing a title with the attempt to preconceive the viewer into thinking that all in opposition are in attendance due to anti-Semitism actually hurts the petition in support of Moisha’s by generalizing the community as “us against them”. It’s quite hypocritical to brandish the opposition as bigots when the entire video is not shown for all viewers to judge on their own. If there were anti-Semites, it was not evident in the videos and if the uncut video was shown, it would expose all bigots to be judged by their own actions.
I was there last night and after the meeting I spoke with many of our non Jewish neighbors and encouraged them to go to Moisha’s and to KRM and check the prices and how the shopping experience for the Jewish customer is very different from theirs. We have created our own ghettos here in Brooklyn and are suffering for the chatoyim of those who portray themselves as community leaders.