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Like crackheads jonesing for their next fix, nobody could be anticipating the opening of two more
Trader Joe's more than the residents of Manhattan, who have been forced to suffer the indignity and inconvenience of waiting in epic checkout lines ever since the city's first branch of the popular market opened a few years ago. It took a long time for the company to confirm rumors, but the upcoming locations at Sixth Avenue and 21
st Street and Broadway and 72
nd Street are now officially listed as upcoming locations on the company's website. Over the weekend, the uptown branch, set to open in a long gestating luxury tower, put up it's "Coming Soon" sign (above), although anyone who walked past the site recently (before the windows were covered) will know that the space is still mostly raw. Escalators being installed point to the likelihood that the store, like most new markets in Manhattan, will be deep underground. "Soon" in this case probably means late this year at the earliest.
Sixth Avenue's branch, however, is a different story. A TJ's employee suggested to us that since that location was taking over an already finished space, it would open much earlier despite it still being clad in anonymous brown paper. Yesterday we confirmed that by finding the tiny hole in the covering that allowed a brief glimpse inside (below), showing the chain's signature rough hewn wooden checkout counters in place amongst the neoclassical columns. It's still several weeks away from opening, but downtowners will now know that, hopefully, they should be able to stop in for some Chili Lime Chicken Burgers or Spinach Tofu Eggrolls very soon without investing half an hour in a ridiculous line.
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