It is almost a lock.
A developer that plans on erecting a new building on the site of Park Slope’s beloved Fifth Avenue Key Food will almost certainly install another grocery store in the new complex, according to a person close the project.
“It’s 99.9 percent certain to have a grocery store,” said the source, who spoke to this paper on condition of anonymity.
This will likely come as welcome news to many locals, who have been rallying to save the market since word got out late last month that real-estate firm Avery Hall Investments had inked a deal to purchase the site at Baltic Street, where it plans to build a residential and commercial property.
Devoted customers say the 33-year-old Key Food is one of the last grocery stores in the increasingly expensive nabe that sells good food at prices they can afford.
“We’re losing all our decent supermarkets that are affordable,” said Carla Held, who lives nearby in a Carroll Gardens, and is one of almost 500 people who have signed an online petition demanding local pols step in to keep the store — or something like it — in the new building.
But it remains unclear what form the new grocery store would take, and whether it will have a selection or price tags comparable to the current mid-range emporium — which is presently offering boneless chicken breasts for $1.99 and .75 cents off Kraft Singles.
And it is unlikely any new store would retain the current one’s massive parking lot, which Held says is a big draw for Brooklynites of a certain age like herself.
“I’m going to be 70 next year,” she said. “It’s not like I’m going to walk a mile and carry packages home.
The developer — which plans to close the deal sometime in late 2016 — has not filed plans for the new building and would not confirm that a grocery store would be a part of it, but said it is taking the residents’ demands into consideration.
“The Avery Hall team is committed to creating a project that is a benefit to the community as a whole and takes seriously the interest expressed by community members in including a grocery store as part of the project,” the company said in a statement.
The firm’s plans comply with existing zoning for the property, according to a spokesman, so it won’t need to put them through a public review. But the developer nevertheless intends to present its eventual plans to the local community board, where community members will be able to offer their two cents, said the rep.
If the Fifth Avenue Key Food disappears, it will join the 12th Street Pathmark in Gowanus, which shut earlier this year, and the Smith Street Met Food Supermarket in Boreum Hill that closed in 2014.
A Key Food in Windsor Terrace closed in 2012, but a new one opened there earlier this year after residents rallied to bring it back
