Foodtown Fills Former Rite Aid at Ocean Hill Crossroads

At the corner of Halsey Street and Broadway in Ocean Hill, a spot where bus riders and subway commuters converge, fall flowers and Halloween pumpkins now line the sidewalk outside a building that sat vacant for much of the past two years. Foodtown opened in the former Rite Aid at 960 Halsey Street earlier this month, and, according to Brownstoner, the store has been busy and full of shoppers since its official grand opening on October 2.

The arrival was something of a surprise. The large one-story building and its even larger parking lot, on a corner as well connected as any in the neighborhood, looked like a textbook candidate for demolition and a big apartment building. Instead, the site is back in service as a supermarket. Inside, Foodtown offers prepared foods, a bakery and a butcher counter, according to Brownstoner’s account.

The store does not enter an empty field. It joins two other full-line grocery stores within a block in either direction, Brownstoner reports, so shoppers in this part of Brooklyn now have a crowded set of choices for their weekly haul.

Public records cited by Brownstoner show the property sold a year ago for $9 million. The buyer was 960 Holding LLC of Staten Island, and the seller was RX Brooklyn Owners LLC. Mortgage documents, the outlet reports, identify John Catsimatidis as the manager of the seller. Catsimatidis is a grocery store mogul, real estate developer and former mayoral candidate.

The building’s earlier tenant left a gap in the neighborhood. Rite Aid closed the location in 2024 after 25 years in business, and the vacant property drew vagrants and graffiti in the interim, according to Brownstoner. The closure fit a national pattern: hundreds of Rite Aid stores have shuttered across the country since the chain filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2023.

The drugstore had been popular here for its large assortment and extended hours. Ocean Hill has long had smaller mom-and-pop pharmacies, but the nearest Walgreens, per Brownstoner, sits on Broadway three subway stops away.

The neighborhood around the site has been changing. Many large mixed-use apartment buildings, including affordable housing developments, have gone up in the area in recent years, Brownstoner notes. The grocery’s own lot carries a long and rougher history. It was once home to 19th-century storefronts and service stations, and by the time of the 1980s tax photo it was an empty, rubble-strewn lot, likely a result of the arson fires that devastated the area in the 1970s.

For now, the corner has a grocery again, with pumpkins out front and shoppers filling the aisles.