By Deborah Lynn Blumberg
Balducci’s, the popular Greenwich Village specialty food store where Villagers once shopped for gourmet meats and cheeses, will return to the Village next year when the store reopens in a new 17,000-sq.-ft. location — a historic former bank at Eighth Ave. and 14th St.
Sutton Place, the corporation that bought Balducci’s in 1999, will open the new store in the spring of 2005, according to Brian Tubridy, manager of the Balducci’s on W. 66th St. The new Balducci’s will offer more than just specialty foods, also selling more mainstream supermarket products such as cleaning products.
“It’s definitely opening up Downtown in February or March 2005,” Tubridy said.
In the 1896 Greek-style marble building complete with a domed ceiling and stained glass panels, the new Balducci’s will replace Central Carpet, a purveyor of rugs founded in 1947. Originally located in the Bronx, the store moved to Columbus Ave. and 80th St. in the 1960s and then to its West Village location in 1992.
Although it can be considered the Village, the corner at the northwest corner of 14th St. and Eighth Ave. is technically in Chelsea, and the store hopes to serve both neighborhoods.
The store has supplied Oriental and Persian rugs for movie productions over the years — for several Woody Allen films, and most recently for the upcoming Pink Panther movie starring Steve Martin — but will move out this fall after Sutton Place offered more money to rent the space, said owner Ike Timiamko. Timiamko is currently negotiating for another Manhattan location.
“We’re really an institute here in New York, forced out by real estate prices,” he said. “It’s a tough move. It’s one the nicest buildings in New York — I would compare it to Grand Central. We’re sad to be leaving.”
