Lidl opens its newest Manhattan supermarket next Wednesday, October 7, at 335 Eighth Avenue, on the corner of West 26th Street. The ribbon-cutting is at 7:40 a.m., and the store will be open daily from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Most coverage has treated it as a chain adding one more location. That misses how the store got there. A supermarket on this corner was a contract requirement set by the landowner, Penn South, long before Lidl's name appeared on any lease.
A Lease Term Before It Was a Lease
Penn South owns the land. The building that used to stand here belonged to the co-op and housed a Gristedes, a McDonald's and a tennis club. By the early 2020s it was falling apart. Repairs cost more than the co-op could pay, and the commercial leases were running out, so Penn South voted to lease the site for redevelopment. It chose MAG Partners in 2021, and MAG signed a 99-year ground lease in December 2022.
The co-op's 2025 annual report states plainly what it asked for in exchange:
"One of our requirements in the ground lease was for the new development to include an affordable supermarket for the community."
That one clause explains the store. A Lidl at Eighth and 26th is the result of a neighborhood landowner choosing to bring a grocery back to the corner it had lost one on. It didn't come from a retailer's site-selection study. Penn South has 2,820 Mitchell-Lama apartments, and the ground rent from this lot goes toward keeping them affordable. For the year ending June 30, 2025, the co-op collected $2.12 million in rent from the site. That was $500,000 more than the year before, and the report says it is "far more than the old building generated." The rent rises on a schedule, and the 2025 report put the first reset 11 years from then, which is roughly a decade from now, with resets every 25 years after that. Sources told The Real Deal the lease could total about $750 million over its term.
So the deal pays the co-op, and the neighborhood gets the grocery the co-op demanded. Both come from the same lease.
The Building Around the Store
MAG named the building Mabel, after the writer and conservationist Mabel Osgood Wright. It has seven stories and about 200,000 square feet, with 188 apartments. Thirty percent of them are set aside for low- and middle-income tenants under the Affordable Housing New York program. COOKFOX designed the red-brick facade to echo the Penn South towers next door, and the building includes passive-house features, planted courtyards and terraces. It is MAG's second multifamily building in Manhattan, after Ruby on West 28th Street.
The apartments opened more than a year before the supermarket. Penn South held a grand opening for Mabel in August 2025 and organized several tours for cooperators. The storefront exterior was finished that summer, but work inside the grocery space was expected to continue through the end of 2025. That gap is why the corner has had a finished building with an empty shopfront for most of the past year.
How the Opening Date Moved
The supermarket's opening date changed several times between the first announcement and now:
- June 2021. Penn South's redevelopment plan for the corner, still occupied by Gristedes and McDonald's, includes a grocery store.
- May 2023. Lidl signs its lease, and the store is projected for early 2026.
- September 2023. Demolition of the old building is finished.
- October 3, 2023. Groundbreaking. Chelsea News reports the target as fall 2025.
- May 2024. The concrete shell is complete.
- August 2025. Mabel opens. Penn South writes that "many in our community eagerly await the opening of a Lidl supermarket in the fall of 2026."
- September 23, 2026. Lidl confirms Wednesday, October 7.
The building stayed fairly close to schedule: shell in 2024, opening in 2025. The grocery is the part that slipped by about a year compared with the earliest forecast.
One Store, Three Sizes
The square footage has also changed depending on who is describing it. The 2023 lease announcement reported a 23,000-square-foot lease. Penn South's annual report calls it a 15,000-square-foot store on the ground floor and basement. Lidl's opening release says "more than 12,100 sq. ft." None of the sources say how each number was measured. A lease total can include back-of-house and basement space that a retailer's sales-floor figure leaves out, so the numbers may not actually conflict. For shoppers, Lidl's own figure is the useful one. It's a mid-size Manhattan grocery, not a suburban-scale store.
Inside, Lidl's announcement lists fresh produce, meat, pantry staples and international specialties. It also has an in-store bakery that bakes throughout the day, including a butter croissant priced at $0.49, plus a non-food aisle that changes every week, from kitchenware to seasonal home goods. Early shoppers get opening discounts on produce, bakery items and non-food goods. The store manager is Brayan Garcia.
How It Fits With Nearby Grocers
Penn South required the store to be affordable, and that is the role Lidl is built for. Hours are the clearest way to compare it with the full-line grocers already within a few avenues:
- Lidl, 335 Eighth Avenue at West 26th Street. Daily, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., starting October 7.
- Whole Foods Market Chelsea, 250 Seventh Avenue. Daily, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
- Trader Joe's, 675 Sixth Avenue. Daily, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.
- Westside Market, 77 Seventh Avenue. Daily, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.
- Westside Market, 170 West 23rd Street. Daily, 7 a.m. to midnight.
- Target, 258 Eighth Avenue at West 23rd Street. Grocery shopping, pickup and delivery.
- Gristedes, 225 Ninth Avenue at West 24th Street.
Lidl's hours match Trader Joe's exactly and end earlier than every Whole Foods and Westside Market location on the list. That makes it a daytime and early-evening store. The Westside Market on West 23rd Street is still the option close by after 9 p.m. Lidl's location is what sets it apart. It sits three blocks north of Target and two avenues west of Whole Foods, on the stretch of Eighth Avenue next to the Penn South complex.
Chelsea Market fills a different need. At 75 Ninth Avenue between West 15th and 16th Streets, it is a group of food vendors rather than a single supermarket. Its directory includes Buon'Italia for Italian groceries, Chelsea Market Baskets, and Pearl River Mart Foods for Asian specialty items. Manhattan Fruit Market has a storefront at 448 West 16th Street. Those shops are for specific ingredients. The new store on 26th Street is for the weekly basics.
A Fourth Manhattan Lidl in Five Years
Chelsea is the latest in a series of Manhattan openings. Harlem's store at 2187 Frederick Douglass Boulevard opened February 23, 2022. The Lower East Side store at 408 Grand Street opened August 1, 2025. Kips Bay's store at 460 Third Avenue opened February 25, 2026. Chelsea will be the fourth, and the third in just over a year. Before this, the closest Lidl for most Chelsea residents was across town on Third Avenue.
In the opening announcement, MaryAnne Gilmartin, MAG Partners' founder and CEO, said the firm was "thrilled to welcome a high-quality supermarket to Mabel." The Mabel deal shows how a supermarket ended up there. A co-op that couldn't afford to repair its own retail building kept the land, collected more rent than the old building ever produced, and made sure a grocery came back. The doors open at 8 a.m. on October 7, after the 7:40 ribbon-cutting.
Ground leases, required retail and co-op-owned land all affect what a Chelsea address is worth over time, and they're rarely visible from the sidewalk. If you'd like to talk through how arrangements like this one shape a building or a block you're considering, Frances Katzen and The Katzen Team are glad to help. Get in Touch.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
