A long-vacant storefront at 21B Knolls Crescent in Spuyten Duyvil has new life again: Fine Fare quietly opened its doors on October 7 in the space once occupied by a shuttered Rite Aid, giving neighborhood shoppers their first full-service grocery store on the strip in more than a year. The grand opening is planned for November, and owner Junior Frias says the store will keep its soft-opening hours of 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends once that celebration happens.
The opening caps a stretch of disinvestment that hit this corner of the Bronx hard. Rite Aid shuttered all five of its Bronx locations, including the Knolls Crescent store, in the summer of 2025 after the chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as part of a statewide shutdown of 178 New York stores, according to The Riverdale Press. That closure followed the 2020 loss of a Chase Bank branch on the same strip, and before Rite Aid ever moved in, the 21B Knolls Crescent space operated as a CTown supermarket — making Fine Fare's debut something of a return to the property's original grocery roots.
Frias didn't come to the project cold. He previously owned Ben's Market next door and closed it to open Fine Fare in its place, signing a 20-year lease with landlord Friedland Properties. Fine Fare itself operates as a cooperative network of independently owned franchise grocery stores, with roughly 50 of its 64 nationwide locations concentrated across New York State, per a Hoodline report on a separate Fine Fare opening on the ground floor of a converted Bronx bank building.
A Grueling Build-Out, Finally Finished
Frias described the project in blunt terms. “This has been one of the toughest projects of my life,” he said, adding that permit delays slowed construction work, equipment delivery and fixture installation. Still, he struck a note of relief: “But I'm very excited. We pulled it off and we're here.”
The store currently employs 14 people and is still waiting on a beer license and additional merchandise deliveries before it can operate at full capacity, Frias said. He also addressed pricing concerns directly, noting that Fine Fare sets its own store pricing and that any increases trace back to inflation rather than markups unique to the new location.
Produce manager Michael Smith, who worked at Ben's Market since it opened in 1998, is staying on in the new store and wants shoppers to know the relationship with the neighborhood hasn't changed. “We are here to work with the community, work with the neighborhood,” Smith said, noting that customers can request items not currently on the shelves. “Whatever they need, we find a way to get.”
A Pharmacy — and a Familiar Face — Could Follow
Next door, in the former Ben's Market space, plans call for a pharmacy to open as early as March 2027, Frias said, though the timeline depends on how quickly permits move through the city. News 12 Bronx reported in June that Ali Al-Bashir, the former pharmacist at the closed Knolls Crescent Rite Aid, has agreed to return and manage the planned pharmacy — offering longtime customers a continuity of care that advocates had pushed hard to preserve.
That push for a pharmacy isn't incidental. Nearly 30 percent of residents in the Riverdale–Spuyten Duyvil area are 65 or older, according to a 2024 New York Academy of Medicine report cited by The Riverdale Press. The residential buildings directly behind the Knolls Crescent plaza belong to a limited-equity housing cooperative, concentrating retirees and residents aging in place who depend on walkable access to groceries and medicine rather than treating it as a convenience.
How Residents Organized to Save the Strip
The push to fill these storefronts traces back to February 2026, when Knolls Crescent Cooperative I president Joan Carroll led community action alongside board member Karen Kawaguchi. Community members aimed to revitalize a commercial strip that had gone mostly vacant amid rising rents and broader disinvestment, identifying a clear need for walkable services aimed at older adults and residents on fixed incomes.
That organizing took shape as the Save Knolls Kappock Retail campaign, which promoted retail opportunities to prospective businesses and kept public attention on the issue through group emails and social media, Kawaguchi said. She's hoping Fine Fare is just the start. “We're hoping [Fine Fare] attracts a restaurant, cafe or urgent care center to the neighborhood,” Kawaguchi said of her ambitions for the broader strip.
The vacancy problem the campaign targeted wasn't just anecdotal. A retail analysis presented to Bronx Community Board 8 in April found an overall storefront vacancy rate of 6.9 percent across Community District 8, specifically flagging Knolls Crescent as a “desolate” hotspot lacking basic services like banks and pharmacies, as Hoodline detailed in its coverage of Northwest Bronx vacancies. The plaza is also split between two separate landlords — Friedland Properties, which manages the former Rite Aid space, and ABC Realty, which owns four other vacant storefronts along the strip — a fragmented ownership structure that has complicated leasing efforts. Commercial rents haven't helped matters: leasing documentation from Friedland Properties listed a 2,065-square-foot space at 13B Knolls Crescent for $9,000 a month.
Mixed Reviews From the Neighborhood
Reaction from shoppers has been largely positive but not uniformly glowing. Heather Yahr, who previously relied mainly on national chains like Stop & Shop because she found Ben's Market prices too high, said she was struck by the new store's selection: “I can't believe how much stuff they put in here.” Fine Fare's walking distance from her home matters too. “I'm so excited that there's a grocery store up here again,” she said.
Frank Banks, who lives across the street from the new store, is withholding full judgment. He previously shopped at Foodtown and the Gourmet Market in Kingsbridge, saying Ben's Market was too expensive and its meat selection fell short. Fine Fare could save him the trip to 231st Street, he said, but he's not ready to call it a win yet: “I'm still going to give them more time, they got a lot of empty space.”
Retail instability has touched more than groceries on this corridor. Local elected officials pressed the U.S. Postal Service earlier this year to fix chronic midday closures and understaffing at the Spuyten Duyvil post office at 562 Kappock Street, according to Hoodline's reporting on the Kappock Street post office — a reminder that the Knolls-Kappock corridor's troubles have extended well beyond a single shuttered pharmacy.
