New Jersey supermarket owners bringing The Fresh Grocer to Fulton Street Mall

Brooklyn’s eight-block-long Fulton Street Mall has seen major national brands such as Nordstrom Rack, American Eagle Outfitters, Gap, Pandora and Aldo claim storefronts previously dominated by cheap fast-food and junk stores.

Macy’s thrives in reduced size. The reborn Gage & Tollner restaurant revived a taste of Fulton’s long-ago dining glamour.

Also reflecting the strip’s rising fortunes, New Jersey’s low-key Inserra family, owners of dozens of supermarkets in the state, have signed a lease for a 21,000 square-foot emporium called The Fresh Grocer at RMC Assets’ 523 Fulton St. RMC owner Raymond M. Chera spent $20 million to renovate and modernize the century-old, three-story building.

The store will have a Fulton Street entrance with the bulk of the space downstairs. Cushman & Wakefield’s Ian Lerner represented the landlord while Lee & Associates’ Steve Lorenzo repped the Inserras.

Lerner said Fresh Grocer, which spearheads an expansion by the Inserras, will have “a prominent presence on one of Brooklyn’s highest-profile streets. RMC Assets is committed to enhancing the neighborhood by attracting premier national credit tenants to the Fulton Mall area.”

The building occupies the whole blockfront between Duffield Street and Albee Square West. Brooklyn Hospital earlier leased over 51,000 square feet of office space in the 114,000 square-foot building and Spectrum Cable took 3,900 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

The new food market is ideally situated to tap a rapidly-growing customer base from nearby apartment towers, including at nearly-finished Brooklyn Tower, the borough’s tallest building.