With all this in mind, it is absurd to think that even the most well-intentioned and well-managed supermarket could have serviced New Brunswick’s most at-risk populations in any meaningful way. Can you imagine if you were part of the city’s majority Latino population? Or if you were part of the 20% of the city’s population with a household income below $15,000, or if you had no car? Would you ever take a twenty-minute walk past your usual small grocers and bodegas with familiar people and familiar products, then navigate between a desolate sea of parking garages and into a part of the city that was not built for you, but for people whose suits cost more than your rent? Is the supermarket’s sushi bar and gelato service really worth it?

Even if the supermarket had actually been located within one of the city’s low-income neighborhoods, the disruption would have been enormous: You’d have to bulldoze an entire 30-lot block just to fit it. And even if the supermarket then attracted residents, it would cut dramatically into the sales of all the surrounding small markets and corner stores, the ones that are often owned or operated by the same residents the supermarket purports to help.

At best, this project was a well-intentioned but massively misguided one that failed to consider realities that should have been obvious—a $105 million bet on a three-legged horse.

At worst, the developer and their public-private partnership had no intention of addressing food access issues, but gladly used the supermarket’s proximity to a food desert to justify millions of dollars in tax credits for their own financial gain and to create the supermarket that they wanted in their enclave.

Either way, a mind-boggling sum of money was poured into this project, a large amount of it from public funds, and it didn’t come remotely close to fulfilling its promises.