With Fairway in Red Hook Closed, Neighboring Shops Wait and Worry

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Workers cleaned up after recent flooding at the Fairway in Red Hook, Brooklyn, considered an anchor for area commerce.

The wind was gusting and icy raindrops had just begun to fall from a bruised sky when Scott Pfaffman, an artist, stuck his head inside the window of Stop 1 deli, "Do you have a dime bag?" he joked, before buying a Gatorade.

Stop 1 sits on lower Van Brunt Street in the seaside neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn. The metal gates guarding its front door are electrically powered and the power was still out on Wednesday, so sales were happening through the window, which the proprietor had to hoist himself through to get in and out, like a looter. "Just ask, we have it," read the handwritten sign above the window, "*Except for hot food, sandwiches, coffee, tea and other hot beverages."

Few people were on the street, and not just because a northeaster was blowing through. The gaggles of volunteers and disaster tourists that had materialized right after Hurricane Sandy walloped the neighborhood were gone.

Exhausted home- and business owners who had weathered the storm, fueled by adrenaline, booze and grit, were still coming to terms with the damage: inventory and equipment drowned by the hurricane's salty surge, no insurance to cover the loss. More ominous to some was the absence of the neighborhood's 800-pound gorilla: Fairway Market, the 52,000-square-foot waterfront grocery store at the base of Van Brunt, took on five feet of water and will not reopen for months.

"It is the lifeblood of this neighborhood," said Triciann Botta, who, along with her husband, opened the Italian wine shop, Botta di Vino, on Van Brunt two and a half years ago. "I'm a wine seller. Food goes with wine. When we lost Fairway, we lost a big part of our customer base."

Fairway's closing reaches beyond the temporary loss of the community grocery store — as inconvenient as it is, local residents are venturing elsewhere, often by car pool. Fairway was a destination. After it opened, over some protests, in a striking, sprawling, brick-and-wrought-iron Civil War-era building six and a half years ago, it drew people "like filings to a magnet," said Mr. Pfaffman, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1987.

New Yorkers figured out how to thread their way under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and though Red Hook's mazelike streets, finding themselves enchanted by its cobblestones, low-slung, rickety row houses and unassuming, small-town air. More shops sprang up to greet them, most along Van Brunt. Fort Defiance, a cafe and bar, opened a few blocks from Fairway. So did Botta di Vino and Dry Dock, another wine shop, and the gift shop Foxy & Winston, whose owner, Jane Buck, sells blown glass salt and pepper shakers, pink squirrel figurines, and stationery, onesies and tea towels printed with hedgehogs, piglets and owls.

Now Fairway is closed indefinitely and several area restaurants and bars are, too.

"I'm not sure how many months a little business like this can sustain itself without foot traffic," said Ms. Buck, whose shop weathered the storm unscathed. "I specialize in things that no one needs."

Four blocks south, workers in white disposable coveralls continued with Fairway's cleanup, picking clumps of insulation out of ruined ovens, positioning industrial space heaters to speed drying and sweeping floors. When Howard Glickberg, whose grandfather founded Fairway, first ventured into the store after the storm, he wept. Display cases had tipped and shattered. The majestic $50,000 coffee roaster was rusting. Wooden cash registers were scattered everywhere, as if lobbed by a careless hand. Cheeses, breads, vegetables and canned goods blanketed the puddled floor. Workers threw out everything, filling 70 Dumpsters.

Fairway's Red Hook location has about 350 employees, most of them local, and those not involved in the cleanup are shuttled daily to other Fairway locations to work. Mr. Glickberg knows that other businesses, not to mention local residents, are anxiously awaiting the store's reopening. But he said there was a monthlong wait for much of the replacement equipment, and he is also waiting for structural engineers to try to make the store watertight. He said he hoped to reopen in two months. "We always knew it was possible," said Mr. Glickberg, of the storm surge, "But this building has been here since the Civil War. There's never been anything like this."

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