Hailing it as “one of the best ideas” in the city’s history, Mayor Mike Rawlings helped break ground Friday March 28th on a $65 million makeover of the Dallas Farmers Market.
The ceremony came just nine months after a private group took the keys for the downtown market from City Hall.
Rawlings introduced the public-private partnership with high expectations.
“This has been a long time coming,” said Rawlings, referring to the years-old proposal to privatize the money-losing market. “This is one of the best ideas this city has ever done.”
Rawlings vowed that the new market, which will see Sheds 3 and 4 razed around June and replaced with 240 apartments and ground-floor retail and 300 public parking spaces, will become “a festive destination that makes us a better place to live, work, learn.”
The redevelopment includes $15 million from the recently expanded Farmers Market Tax Increment Finance District, and it’s already a work in progress.
Shed 1, the longtime home of the local farmers, has been emptied and sits fenced off. Its tenants have been moved over to Shed 3 and told they’ll be able to return by no later than mid-June.
Shed 3’s parking spaces are filled with vegetable sellers, tea-makers and other produce peddlers.
By June or July, work on the enclosed, air-conditioned Shed 2 will begin, and the new ownership group said it will reopen in October with four locally based eateries serving as anchors.
They have not yet been named.
“We’re on the edge [of naming them],” said Jack Gosnell, executive vice president at UCR who has been tasked with getting those leases.
“We’re real close. It’s always this way with a new project. But it’s going well.”
The market is in the hands of, among others, Third Rail Lofts developer Brian Bergersen, Standard Fruit and Vegetable’s Ruthie Pack and restaurateurs Phil and Janet Cobb, who first pitched the idea four years ago.
Before the ceremony, Bergersen said he’s just glad construction is underway because time is of the essence: Spring and summer are the market’s busiest seasons, and farmers are eager to pull up their pickups and begin offloading their goods.
“It’s been a lot of work to get to this point,” he said. “We’ve really compressed the time frame on this. We’ve got 15 acres we’re trying to redevelop in downtown Dallas and, at the same time, keep the farmers going. This is a monumental task.”
For Downtown Dallas Inc. and city officials, the market’s makeover heralds the rebirth of downtown’s east side.
It will sit surrounded by new townhomes, many of which were sold before they were completed; an under-construction restaurant and yoga studio rising from the remnants of a historic building; and the LSG Lofts, once Lone Star Gas’ sprawling, ornate headquarters.
The new market will also include 60 additional residential units and 25,000 square feet of retail space planned on Taylor Street, site of three warehouses and former restaurants that will be demolished in coming months.
“And my favorite part is when it’s over” by the end of 2016, said John Crawford, president and CEO of Downtown Dallas Inc.
Source: Dallas Morning News
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