Upper East Side Board Wants Fairway To Stop Blocking 86th Street

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — An Upper East Side community board is asking the city to revoke the special permits that have allowed Fairway Market to clog streets and sidewalks in front of its supermarket for a decade, neighbors say.

Months before Fairway opened its East 86th Street market in 2011, Community Board 8 called on the city to allow the store to use the street as a loading zone every day between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. — well beyond the hours typically granted to businesses in the neighborhood.

Fairway's owners said the extension was needed to allow delivery trucks to stagger their schedules to prevent congestion and double parking. In the ensuing years, however, "there have been frequent complaints that Fairway Market has not kept their commitments to control the situation in front of their store," according to CB8.

For hours each day, trucks sit double- and triple-parked in front of the store while crates, forklifts and boxes block the sidewalk, neighbors say.

The board contends that Fairway "has not been a good neighbor," with management failing to respond to repeated complaints about the unloading.

"We’ve asked them to come talk to the committee but they didn't, so we decided that we would cut back on their parking privilege and see if that got their attention," Chuck Warren, co-chair of CB8's transportation committee, said during Wednesday night's board meeting.

The resolution that passed the board unanimously on Wednesday asks the Department of Transportation to change Fairway's loading zone hours from 5 a.m. to midnight to 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Formerly a family-owned business, the chain sold four of its locations to the owner of ShopRite last year, including the Upper East Side store.

Fairway did not respond to a request for comment.

Fairway is not the only neighborhood business whose unloading practices have raised ire on the Upper East Side. Less than a block away, Amazon and Fresh Direct often block Third Avenue for grocery deliveries, snarling traffic and irritating neighbors.