The Pickle Guys stand at The Market Line

The weekend before Thanksgiving I went to the new Market Line, a subterranean food hall that’s part of the Essex Crossing development, a $1.5B and 1.9M SF development project in the Lower East Side. The development is run by Delancey Street Associates, which is made up of L & M Development Partners, Taconic Investment Partners, BFC Partners, the Prusik Group, and Goldman Sachs’ Urban Investment Group. I’ve been going to both the old and new location of Essex Street Market, also part of Essex Street Crossing. The new location of Essex Street Market is the ground floor of the Market Line and I was excited to see what they were adding below.

Essex Street Market is primarily grocers and specialty shops, while the Market Line, so far (future plans here), is basically a food hall with all your favorite vendors from the neighborhood, which is what is weird about it. If I want to go to Veselka, I’ll go to Veselka, not the Veselka outpost at the Market Line. If I want a Donut Plant donut, I’ll go to Donut Plant, which is literally one block away from the Market Line.

Overall the Market Line looks great, feels spacious, and is welcoming. They have 24+ vendors, with many more to be added in as they expand this underground retail corridor — their website says it will have over 150 vendors when they are finished in 2021. One great thing about the Market Line is that, according to Eater NY, about 75% of the vendors are either immigrant, minority, or women owned businesses.

My fear with the Market Line is that it will just be another consumerist space where tourists come to get a taste of the Lower East Side, without actually walking around in the Lower East Side. It’s so easy to go to so many amazing places to eat, people watch, learn, and explore in the LES and while I guess it’s nice to have many of the food gems in one place, it takes out the opportunity for happenstance that makes New York City, and particularly the LES, such a fun place to visit and explore.

My overarching issue with the Market Line and other privately owned and run food halls, is that they are essentially privatized public spaces with an end goal of making more money for the land owners and developers. Instead of people mingling outside in a public square or park, they draw people indoors, where consuming is the main activity and only people of a certain economic level are able to participate. I also wonder how much public funds were used to facilitate this development and how much is going back to the local economy.

Because the Market Line is a privately-owned public space that benefits from the cultural richness of the Lower East Side, it should be doing more to give back and retain the culture and diversity of the neighborhood as well as prioritizing the communities’ desires and people, perhaps focusing on sustainability and hiring local artists for the artwork and activations.

Focus on Sustainability

Early last year, I went to a community meeting to discuss what we wanted for the new Essex Street Market location and many people voiced the desire for affordable public programming and making the market environmentally friendly, e.g. reusing the same dishes for dine-in and having eco-friending takeout packaging. Essex Street Market was done pretty well, but I don’t see any real commitment to being sustainable. The Market Line is the same — except at the sit-down restaurants, which at least re-use your dish-ware.

Community-Oriented and Accessible Programming

While there are some large tables in the Market Line for communal seating, a seating area underneath the stairs that lead up to Essex Street Market, and some seating in certain vendor areas, like Café Grumpy, there could be more. I also am a big believer in programming — The Market Line could create unique opportunities for locals and tourists to interact with some free and ongoing public programming, perhaps a neighborhood supper club, creative facilitated interactions, or rotating programs featuring local organizations. There are lots of empty stalls in the Market Line that may fulfill this need, but I still fear programming will be aimed at higher income locals and tourists instead of being affordable to everyone.

Photo source: @adamlucasnyc on Instagram

Hire Local Women BIPOC Artists

The three large-scale artworks currently up at Essex Street Crossing were done by local artists, who seem to all be male and white: Brooklyn-based illustrator Aaron Meshon did the mural on the second floor of Essex Street Market, Chinatown-based Adam Lucas did the artwork on the east Delancey entrance of the Market Line, and ASVP, Brooklyn-based Simon Grendene and Victor Anselmi, did the mural outside the Essex Crossing’s luxury rental The Rollins. According to Lucas’ Instagram post, the current work at the east Delancey entrance of the Market Line will be up for a time and then he’ll curate the space indefinitely, which is pretty cool.

While I’m glad Delancey Street Associates hired artists from Chinatown and Brooklyn, they could have done a better job hiring local artists who reflect the demographics of the area, which is extremely diverse in age, race, and socioeconomic status. According to the 2010 census, the Lower East Side is only 35% White, 9% Black, 27% Asian, and 26% Hispanic, as well as 52% female. Why then are all the artists on the large-scale art projects male and white?

I hope that for any remaining artwork, Delancey Street Associates will commission local black, indigenous, and/or women of color artists who reflect the makeup of the local community. This will also give an economic boost to local artists instead of sending that money elsewhere or hiring artists who are already getting the majority of large space art commissions — white men.

Have you been to the Market Line at Essex Street Crossing? What do you think?

Market Line or Bottom Line?

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