Trader Joe’s Drops Anchor in Queens

Few neighborhoods in New York have grown quite as dramatically over the past 20 years as the Queens enclave of Long Island City. Once a waterfront industrial neighborhood, its easy access to Manhattan and room to grow as industry faded away has led to dozens of modern high-rise residential buildings, offices and nearly a second headquarters for Amazon. Long Island City was also the founding site for FreshDirect, a remnant of its warehouse-heavy past, but even it has since moved away.

All that new growth has yielded lots of new restaurants and retail but relatively few supermarkets, making a target-rich market for Monrovia, Calif.-based Trader Joe’s, which opened June 25 on busy Jackson Avenue, between the Court Square subway and the MOMA PS1 museum.

What follows are photo from the grand opening.

Andrew Antonik, who previously worked at Trader Joe’s Hoboken, N.J., store, is your captain.

A look at a fruit display separating two dozen busy checkstands. The store is about 10,000 square feet.

A look at the meat display.

Kitschy custom signage reflects the store’s neighborhood. Above this display of meats and cheeses, the Trader Joe’s name is rendered in the style of a 1940s-era Pepsi-Cola sign that is the only remnant of the bottling plant that closed in Long Island City more than 20 years ago.

This sign depicts the gantries from which freight cars were ferried across the East River. The gantries still exist as part of a state park.

An endcap merchandises summer treats: ice cream, cones and toppings.

“BBQ cut” salmon fillets in a seafood cooler.