Second outposts for a Mexican tortillería in Corona, a Yorkville German butcher shop and an East Village Ukrainian diner will all share one home on the Lower East Side later this year, when the first section of a 150,000-square-foot food bazaar opens at the intersection of Essex and Delancey streets.
Tortilleria Nixtamal, Schaller & Weber and Veselka were three of nine food vendors developers announced in February as joining The Market Line, one 700-foot-long stretch of the long-delayed housing development Essex Crossing. Four more, including flagship Lower East Side shops The Pickles Guys and Doughnut Plant, have since been signed on to the project, Delancey Street Associates revealed on Thursday.
The Market Line will ultimately feature more than 100 local food, art, music and fashion vendors. The first section opening to the public in 2018 is slated to sit alongside the new home of the 77-year-old Essex Street Market, on the first and basement levels of a 25-story mixed-use building at 115 Delancey St. When it’s finished, the market will be the largest of its kind in New York City, according to Delancey Street Associates.
Other vendors to announce their participation in the Market Line so far include: the Lebanese nut purveyor Castania Nut Boutique; the cold-pressed juice spot Substance Vitality Bar; the coffeehouse chain Cafe Grumpy; the Industry City-based butcher Ends Meat; the Lower East Side seafood market Aqua Best (operating under the name Essex Pearl); a fast-casual ramen counter from the Japanese restaurant Ippudo; Chinatown tea parlor Nom Wah and the Brooklyn-based craft kombucha maker Pilot Kombucha.
“The Lower East Side has always been at the epicenter of the city’s diverse immigrant food culture, and it’s our goal to create a market reflective of this and worthy of New York’s reputation as one of the world’s greatest cities,” said Rohan Mehra, co-founder of The Prusik Group, a real estate development company involved in the Essex Crossing project, in a statement in February.
The project, which is expected to be complete by 2024, will ultimately erect 1,000 housing units, half of which will be reserved as affordable, a public park, a Trader Joe’s, a Target and a movie theater on six acres that have been mostly vacant since 1967.
