"Most of the grocers these days… they tend to be a little smaller, or they're really massive." Joe Vaccaro of V20 Group told the Stamford Advocate that in August 2024, a few weeks after his Darien-based firm bought the empty Fairway building at 699 Canal St. Two years later, his prediction has turned into a floor plan.
In early October, Charter Realty, the firm leasing the building for V20, announced that Chipotle, Jersey Mike's and Primrose Schools had signed leases. It also said a lease with an unnamed grocer was "nearing signature." The grocer's space is 13,080 square feet. The whole property measures about 84,000 square feet.
So the South End is getting groceries back on Canal Street, in roughly one-sixth of the building that used to be its supermarket. That size reflects what a full grocery store costs to run in Stamford's urban core. It is the same cost the Board of Representatives is now trying to bring down with a tax-break ordinance.
Six years of an empty box
Fairway opened at 699 Canal St. in November 2010. It closed on Aug. 18, 2020, after selling off its last inventory. The chain was in its second bankruptcy since 2016. LoanCore Capital owned the property from 2021. V20 bought it on July 30, 2024, and said from the start that it wanted a grocer there and not apartments.
The gap was felt quickly. In April 2023 the Stamford Advocate reported that no big-box grocery store was within walking distance of downtown or the South End. The closest options it named were the limited fresh-food aisle at the downtown Target and Harbor Point Organic Market, which it described as pricier and not a full weekly shop.
V20 asked the neighborhood what it wanted. Its 2025 survey drew 2,895 responses, and 96% of them asked for a grocery store. About half of the respondents said they lived at Harbor Point, and 81% said they had no grocery store within a mile of home. Demand was never in question. The question was whether a supermarket the size of Fairway could make money there.
How the building is being divided
Here is the space as Charter Realty has described it.
| Tenant | Square feet | Status as of late October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Club Studio, fitness club | 37,000 | Lease announced 2025; website lists "Coming Soon" |
| Primrose Schools | 16,167 | Lease signed; first Connecticut location |
| Unnamed grocer | 13,080 | Lease "nearing signature" |
| Open space | 11,270 | Not yet leased |
| Chipotle | 2,519 | Lease signed; second Stamford location |
| Jersey Mike's | 1,176 | Lease signed; second Stamford location |
The gym is the anchor, at nearly three times the grocer's footprint. Club Studio is planning a January opening, according to a Stamford Advocate report from Aug. 27 that quoted Vaccaro. As for the restaurants and the preschool, Charter Realty principal Dan Zelson told Stamford Patch on Oct. 6 that he expected them to apply for permits "shortly," with construction starting once permits are issued. He gave no details on the grocer. None of these tenants has announced an opening date.
The 40,000-square-foot rule
The grocer's size matters because of the zoning. The site is zoned SRD-N, and in 2024 the Stamford Advocate reported that the zone required any retail grocery store there to be at least 40,000 square feet. Vaccaro called that rule an impediment to leasing the building. City staff had discussed removing or changing it, but nothing formal had been done.
The city's current zoning regulations, dated May 31, 2026, still put "Food Shop, Retail" in the large-format retail category. That category is defined as a single tenant occupying at least 40,000 square feet. The planned grocery is about a third of that size. Neither the landlord nor the city has said publicly how the store will be classified under those rules. Anyone hoping for a specific chain should take that as the open question still hanging over the grocery lease.
The rule assumed that a grocer on this site would want something close to Fairway's scale, and grocers have not been asking for that. Vaccaro put it plainly in 2024: a single grocer taking the whole 84,000 square feet "isn't realistic," and the building would more likely be split among two or three tenants. The final lineup has more tenants than that, but the logic is the same.
Why a full-size supermarket is hard to make work here
City Rep. Ryan Hughes, who represents downtown's District 6, gave the Stamford Advocate the cost side in a Sept. 28 report. He said a grocery store is "a lot more expensive" to open in an urban area than in the suburbs because of limited parking, restrictive loading rules and thin profit margins. All three costs rise with the size of the store. A 13,080-square-foot market needs fewer parking spaces, fewer truck deliveries and less inventory than an 80,000-square-foot one. The smaller format keeps a grocer's risk within what the site can support.
Hughes's answer is an "Urban Grocery Store Development District" covering Downtown, the South End and the East Side. Grocers opening there could get property tax reductions and fixed-assessment agreements. "It is the city agreeing to collect less money, but in doing that, we're letting the grocery retailer serve our community," he told the Advocate. He also said the ordinance could include a cap on the program's total incentives.
Leah Kagan, Stamford's director of economic development, supports the plan. She told the Advocate that the short-term effect of a fixed assessment would benefit the community more than the revenue the city would give up. Wayne Pesce, president of the Connecticut Food Association, disagreed in the same report. He said Stamford residents have "ample" grocery options and expanding delivery services, and that the city should first look at why some locations aren't economically viable. Kagan has also been working directly with V20 on the Canal Street building. No public statement has tied the ordinance to the grocer now negotiating there.
Where the ordinance stands
The proposal is labeled LR32.023 and is still being worked on.
- Sept. 29–30: The Legislative and Rules Committee sent it back to the Steering Committee to refine the language and answer questions about benefits to grocery retailers and fixed-assessment agreements.
- Oct. 13: Steering voted to put it back on the agenda.
- Oct. 27: It was scheduled for another Legislative and Rules Committee meeting.
- Nov. 4: It is listed "for publication" on the Board of Representatives' regular meeting agenda, at 7:30 p.m. at the Government Center, 888 Washington Blvd.
The Nov. 4 meeting will also be held remotely on Zoom, so anyone following the district's boundaries or a possible cap can watch without going downtown.
Grocery shopping until Canal Street opens
The rest of Stamford's grocery map has changed since Fairway closed. The Stop & Shop at 1937 West Main St. closed on Oct. 31, 2024, as one of five Stop & Shop closures in Connecticut that year. Whole Foods Market opened at 110 High Ridge Road on Dec. 12, 2024. Neither store is in the South End. For now, the options nearest the neighborhood are:
- Harbor Point Organic Market, 14 Harbor Point Road, open since March 2021, with groceries and prepared foods
- ShopRite of Shippan Avenue, 200 Shippan Ave., run by Cingari Family Markets
- Stop & Shop, 2200 Bedford St., the chain's remaining Stamford store
- Target's downtown market, which Hughes told the Advocate is not always available. It closed temporarily after flooding in July.
When the Canal Street grocer is named, its size will set what kind of store it can be. A 13,080-square-foot store is a neighborhood market. A full-size supermarket for the South End would most likely need either a different site or the tax math Hughes is proposing, and the Board of Representatives takes the next step on that math on Nov. 4.
If you own near Canal Street and want to know how changes on Canal Street could affect your home's value, Dannel Malloy and the team can talk it through by appointment. Request a Confidential Valuation.
