Paul Bass Photos
Victoria Ferraro with staffer Aniello Furino outside the market Monday.
Yelissa Martinez (left): Crosses street daily to shop.
The Ferraro family is moving the market it started in New Haven in 1952 to the suburbs — leaving public-housing tenants like Yelissa Martinez and Gladys Lugo with no walkable place to buy groceries.
The Ferraro’s Food Center will leave its Grand Avenue location on Dec. 24, according to Victoria Ferraro, a third-generation family member helping to run the market that Sal Ferraro started in 1952.
The market will reopen next to Target on North Haven’s Universal Drive some time in February, she said.
(Updates: The family said it has found a new operator for a grocery store in the building starting in January. And it has moved the last day of operation up to Dec. 31. Read more about that here.)
John T. Hill Photo
Sal Ferraro opened the business as Mohawk Market on State Street in 1952. (It’s pictured above on May Day 1970, when like other downtown businesses it shuttered because of feared street violence connected to protests about a Black Panther murder trial.) The market moved to the Grand Avenue location in the 1970s.
Victoria Ferraro said the neighborhood has gotten too dangerous for many of her customers, who drive in from other neighborhoods or from the suburbs. Daily shootings took place on Grand Avenue right in front of the market in September and October.
“It’s bittersweet for sure,” she said of the move out of the city. “The past couple of years haven’t been the same. The area’s getting rougher for us. I work with a lot of family members. My sisters come help my mom. It is still [going to be] very close to New Haven.”
Her uncle, store co-owner Peter Ferraro, said crime wasn’t the driving factor, but rather a desire to “downsize” from the current 20,000 square-foot space to the new 6,400 one. The new location will focus mostly on Ferraro’s trademark lure …
… its meats.
“I don’t think we will lose any business” in North Haven, Victoria Ferraro predicted. “We’ll gain a lot.”
Indeed, some customers interviewed outside the store Monday — none of whom had known about the pending move — said they will drive out to North Haven to shop at the new location.
To a person they gave the same two reasons for why they drive to Ferraro’s: “The meats.” And the lower prices, which Peter Ferraro said the market is able to procure by buying so much meat in bulk. (It operates a “Meat King” distribution business for markets throughout the region.)
Paul Bass Photo
Flor Bernier (pictured), for instance, is ready to drive to North Haven to continue buying chicken and pork chops, even though he lives so close to the current store on Woolsey Street. C‑Town, which is near him in Fair Haven, charges too much for its meats, he said.
“I’m going to go where the meat’s at,” echoed Herbert Russell, who drives to the market from Dixwell, bypassing Stop & Shop. “I can go to North Haven. Everything is over there anyway.”
“I don’t mind” the drive, said Arkisha Smith, who said she has been coming regularly to Ferraro’s from Valley Street for decades. She was picking up turkey legs and Italian sausage Monday to prepare for Thanksgiving, “It’s the best in town,” she said.
James Dudley, pictured during a work break, said he hopes he can make the move with the market. After the pandemic put on hold his job as a chef at Wilbur Cross High School, he landed work in the Ferraro’s dairy section, and likes it. He lives down the road on James Street. He said he has shopped at the store since it moved to Grand Avenue, when he was growing up across the street at the Farnam Courts public-housing development.
That complex is now rebuilt and renamed Mill River Crossing. Some tenants there, like Yelissa Martinez and Gladys Lugo (pictured), won’t be able to shop at the new North Haven Ferraro’s. Because they don’t have a car.
They have six people in their household. So they end up walking across the street every day to pick up groceries at Ferraro’s.
What will they do now?
Martinez shrugged. They’ll have to figure out a way to shop at the Fair Haven C‑Town, she figured. She’ll miss the convenience, not to mention the low meat prices.
“It’s not good,” she said.
James Wilson: “I’m going to be sad. I live right down the street” and love the hot dogs and hamburgers. He has shopped at Ferraro’s for 20 years.
“This is the meat market for me”: Stephanie Cruz (pictured with daughter Jayda) drives to Ferraro’s from the Hill, but says North Haven is too far.