In one of the final acts of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration, New York City and the Hunts Point Terminal Produce Market agreed on a seven-year lease renewal that will keep the market in the Bronx until June 2021.
The market is among the largest wholesale produce markets in the world, sitting on 105 acres and comprising one million square feet of interior space, of which 660,000 square feet is refrigerated.
According to city officials, the lease renewal on Dec. 31 affects roughly 3,000 direct jobs. The agreement also preserves the market's existing 10-year renewal option which can be exercised in June 2021 in order to continue to operate on the site into the future. The market, which opened in 1967, and the city will also partner on work to repair and modernize the facility.
The market in August received $10 million under the U.S. Department of Transportation's TIGER, or Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, program for freight rail improvements.
Robert Steel, New York City's deputy mayor for economic development under Bloomberg, acknowledged New Jersey's interest in Hunts Point. "If we don't nurture it, we will lose it," he said at an economic development meeting on Staten Island late in 2011.
