BY RIVER FLEISCHNER
A $14 million real estate deal has left a community fridge in Williamsburg with nowhere to go.
The fridge, one of four stocked by volunteers with North Brooklyn Mutual Aid, has operated outside Music Hall of Williamsburg since last year. In December, following the venue’s sale to Michael Weitzman, a property manager who owns several other properties in Greenpoint, the historic music venue will close its doors, and the fridge will be out of a location.
The development comes less than a year after the fridge was moved from its previous location in front of the Lot Radio in Greenpoint, where it provided free food for neighbors since 2020, before food licensing hurdles experienced by the Lot Radio forced it to move.
Representatives for North Brooklyn Mutual Aid, an entirely volunteer-run operation, told Greenpointers they are in search of a new location for the fridge.
While real estate prices and cost of living has skyrocketed in the North Brooklyn neighborhood, data provided by the NYC council shows that the region has a higher than average number of food-insecure people, with fewer than average city-funded assistance programs. According to the study, for a region with 1,9074 food insecure people, there are only two city-run food bank programs, or Community Food Connections (CFC).
According to the urban housing think tank NYU Furman Center, the average North Brooklyn rent increased by 102.3% between 2006 and 2024.
“There’s so much money in this city, someone can’t throw a hundred K at this?” said Jen Dalton, a volunteer for North Brooklyn Mutual Aid. Dalton has volunteered with the non-profit since 2020, when she sought ways to help support her neighbors during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Every Thursday morning, Dalton buys as many groceries as she can with $60, which is the amount North Brooklyn Mutual Aid can reimburse for each stocking. She then restocks the community fridge closest to her home, on Kingsland and Frost Street.
Last Thursday, she filled six reusable shopping bags with cartons of eggs, milk, pasta, canned beans, potatoes and carrots, and drove the groceries to the fridge outside the Cooper Houses on Kingsland. She used to “stumble across the street with an armload of groceries,” she said, before an Aldi supermarket opened nearby, whose lower prices allowed for larger purchases.
As she loaded the fridge with armloads of food, a small group of mostly elderly neighbors began to assemble, and almost as soon as the fridge was filled, it was empty again. One woman left empty handed, cursing in Spanish.
Double U Development, Weitzman’s company responsible for the purchase of the venue and subsequent uprooting of the community fridge, owns nine other multi-use properties in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. According to their website, Weitzman and Double U Development are “committed to developing New York neighborhoods and transforming the Williamsburg skyline.”