The designer hams and Medjool dates have arrived. That much is certain. But will anyone come to Red Hook to buy them? That remains an open question.

The biggest supermarket in the now fourstore Fairway chain opens today in the once industrial neighborhood of Red Hook.

There were last-minute crises in the rush to open the 52,000-square-foot store. A women who works in the Fairway bakery department passed out and had to be taken by paramedics to Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. (She was conscious as she was loaded into the ambulance around 3 p.m. yesterday.)

At the same time, many of the store’s 200 employees were out in the parking lot because of a power failure. During tests, an electrical switch from a generator had failed, the store’s general manager, David Serrano, said, assuring that all would be in working order by today.

None of those problems stopped the forklifts outside from unloading dozens of arriving trucks.Crates of Christopher Ranch garlic, Foxy broccoli, South Florida potatoes, and Ocean Mist romaine were piled high next to trucks bearing the names of Haagen-Dazs, Dean’s Seafood, and Vivino Wine Distributors.

Some Brooklyn foodies say even Irish butter, fresh-roasted coffee, and the largest fresh fish selection in the borough may not entice them to forsake their old shopping habits.

“I do Fresh Direct,” a Cobble Hill resident, Efram Zimbalist IV, said. The 34-year-old futures trader was leaving the Key Food store on Atlantic Avenue with his boxer, T-Bone. “With this market within walking distance for last-minute stuff and Fresh Direct, which will deliver right to my door, it’s going to be hard to get me to Red Hook.”

A Fairway spokeswoman, Susan Graziano, said she isn’t worried.The chain believes its superior selection at rock-bottom prices will entice Brooklyn residents to leave behind their local markets.

“They’re going to be coming from Prospect Heights, and Park Slope and Carroll Gardens,” Ms. Graziano said. “There are lots of neighborhoods around there with families and cars that are within 15 or 20 minutes of Red Hook. There’s nothing in Brooklyn like it.”

The new Fairway is significantly larger than the 34,000-square-foot store in Harlem and the original 25,000-square-foot original location on the Upper West Side. The Red Hook store is on the ground floor of a pre-Civil War former coffee warehouse at the foot of Van Brunt Street. The chain’s owners say 90% of shoppers will arrive by car.

There is a 300-car lot in front of the store, but Fairway has cut a deal with New York Water Taxi for weekends-only $5 ferry service from lower Manhattan.

To entice the carless masses to try the store, Fairway offers free delivery through June 16 on purchases of more than $100 to anywhere in the city, and $5 delivery after that.

“We haven’t limited the delivery zone yet,” Ms. Graziano said. “We want to see where demand comes from.”

It won’t be coming from at least one loyal member of the Park Slope Co-op market. “The whole notion of co-op membership is that we shop locally,” the editor in chief of the Brooklyn Papers, Gersh Kuntzman, said. “We do not get in our car and pollute the environment so we can get five cents off Camembert.”

Not everyone was so skeptical. As a frenzy of last-minute activity buzzed around the Red Hook Fairway yesterday, neighborhood resident Mary Boland said she was excited. “We need a grocery store here. I’ve been going to Trader Joes in the city and bodegas in Park Slope.”

Ms. Boland works at a bakery a few blocks away called Baked that is locally beloved for its ham-and-cheddar biscuits. She said she is not worried that the behemoth market, which will sell 500 kinds of prepared foods daily, will put Baked out of business. “We have a lot of regulars,” Ms. Boland said.

In fact, Fairway will sell some of Baked’s products, including its homemade marshmallows.

The store will sell everything from rare gray shallots to prawn chips from Hamburg, from organic Australian beef to preserved lemons. Soon, Fairway hopes to have set up an outdoor cafe along a waterfront esplanade behind the store.

Such high-flying dreams are a contrast to the once-crumbling old warehouses that stood in the area. Within two years, an Ikea is expected to open a few blocks away, meaning shoppers will soon be able to peruse 350 varieties of cheese at Fairway before checking out the latest in Scandinavian bookshelf design.

The only problem may be the same one that has held Red Book back for generations – transportation. Separated from the rest of Brooklyn by the Gowanus Expressway, there are few roads in and out of the neighborhood and no subways.

One fireman who responded to the fainting woman leaned against his truck and surveyed the bustling scene. “The traffic,” he said, “is going to be rough.”