Senator-Elect Booker Joins Christie to Break Ground on Central Ward Supermarket

Fresh off his victory in a special election for US Senate the night before, Mayor Cory Booker joined Gov. Chris Christie in Newark Thursday for the groundbreaking of a new supermarket and retail complex to be built near University Hospital.

Booker declined to say when exactly he will step down as mayor to officially become the Democratic senator from New Jersey, but he will likely be sworn in within the next few weeks. Booker also vowed to help restore a spirit of bipartisan cooperation in Washington, where a deal was struck to end the two-week government shutdown just as Booker learned he had defeated Steve Lonegan to become New Jersey’s first African-American senator.

Booker also refused to say whom he is supporting in the race for mayor next year. When Booker officially steps down, the Newark Municipal Council will select an interim replacement to serve until the elections in May 2014.

“This was the first time the Giants have had a victory all year,” Christie, teasing Booker over the travails of his favorite football team, said of his victory Wednesday night. “Little did Tom Coughlin know he would have to depend on a washed-up tight end from Stanford.”

Christie was speaking at a large, barren lot at the corner of South Orange Avenue and Jones Street, where Tucker Development Corp. -- the Chicago-based firm that also built the Courtyard by Marriott hotel on Broad Street -- will build a complex that will consist of a 66,000-square-foot ShopRite supermarket, 50,000 square feet of retail space and more than 150 units of market-rate housing.

The project is expected to be completed in late 2014 or early 2015.

The anchor retailer for the development is the supermarket, which will be owned and operated by the Greenstein family, who have run a ShopRite store in Bloomfield for generations.

The store will also house a medical clinic, a dietician who will provide free consultations to shoppers about healthy eating, as well as 300 full- and part-time union jobs, said Neil Greenstein, the owner and operator of the Newark store.

“This is going to create hundreds of jobs, strong jobs, unions jobs, jobs that will allow people to make a decent wage and to retire with dignity,” Booker said.

The state Economic Development Authority is assisting in the financing of the project, Christie also said, adding that he plans to “put the time, the effort and the resources” necessary to help Newark flourish.

Christie, who lived in Newark until he was five and whose parents and grandparents are city natives, said the development has significance beyond merely providing more places to shop for residents. Noting that the Central Ward was near the heart of the 1967 riots that destroyed large parts of the city, Christie said any new construction is a way to “turn the page” on that chapter in Newark’s history.

There are “people of means, people of intelligence, who believe [Newark] is a place worth investing in, a place worth fighting for,” said Christie.