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Q&A
EDC and Mayor's Office representatives discuss cold storage plans and needs
1:01:37
·
171 sec
Michelle Lamberti from EDC and Kate MacKenzie from the Mayor's Office of Food Policy respond to questions about cold storage facilities in NYC, focusing on plans for the Hunts Point produce market and broader cold storage needs.
- EDC's focus on redeveloping Hunts Point produce market with new refrigerated warehouses
- Discussion of current challenges, including idling refrigeration units and environmental concerns
- Mayor's Office perspective on various use cases for cold storage, including emergency food distribution
- Mention of existing cold storage inventory and capacity building efforts
Michelle Lamberti
1:01:37
Sure.
1:01:37
I might thank you for the question, council member.
1:01:39
I might defer the the study on the need for cold storage to my colleague, but I can say with respect to cold storage at EDC, right now, focus is really on the redevelopment of the Hunts Point produce market.
1:01:52
And so as you're you're probably aware there, there are we really have a serious lack of refrigeration, and so there are a thousand of these transport refrigeration units that are really idling on diesel, unfortunately, and are, you know, not great for our community members, like a challenge in an already environmental justice community.
1:02:11
And so our priority right now is to really focus on the redevelopment of the produce market where we will be building two new larger warehouse refrigerated facilities that will be able to really take those trailers offline.
1:02:23
So that's where our focus is right now and I would I would defer if Kate has anything to add on just broader cold storage.
Kate MacKenzie
1:02:29
I would would say certainly that that's right.
1:02:33
Also, it's sort of it's a question that has to be asked sort of in the what is the use case.
1:02:38
Right?
1:02:38
And I think we learned, you know, during the pandemic where we needed to store so much food to get it into people's homes.
1:02:46
That was a specific use case, and it's sort of like we would never have that need, you know, to be able to do anyone that needs food to get that to them.
1:02:56
But what I can tell you is that where, for instance, in the emergency food space, we hear a need for cold storage or refrigeration, we work to make grants possible for what we call capacity building within the emergency food space.
1:03:10
If we hear, you know, I spoke earlier about Grow NYC which is opening up a regional food hub that will have seven different refrigerated units available in that.
1:03:24
So the use case is to be able to have a 20,000,000 pound distribution flow.
1:03:31
So that's thinking about that use case.
1:03:33
And I think, you know, it is just as clearly acknowledged that when we were whether it was storing vaccines or storing meals, we acknowledge that we were challenged when it came to refrigerated space in the city.
1:03:48
And as there's a lot in the testimony here about just the the distributed network of of of our infrastructure in New York City, how we have assets like these big hubs of whether it be the FreshDirect building that wasn't there years and years ago, it has the capacity for cold storage.
1:04:07
And so just looking at, and my colleagues at NISM, emergency management, do have a catalog, it's probably more than a catalog, but an inventory of all of the different assets in the city that have cold storage capacity so that if and when we needed to activate something, we would know who to call.