If you’re among the 400 or so local food fans who successfully snagged tickets to BREADA’s sold-out Farm Fête fundraiser tonight, you’ll be rewarded with a sneak peek at the renovated Main Street Market. The now overhauled indoor market is the site of this year’s event.
The 8,000-square foot facility at Fifth and Main streets has been transformed into a light and airy space with better flow, new bays for restaurant tenants, flexible space for vendors and pop-ups and a new BREADA teaching kitchen, among other changes.
The facility, closed for construction for more than a year, will be open again to the public beginning Oct. 5 on Saturdays during the Red Stick Famers Market. Its four new restaurant partners will be announced soon, but they won’t open until later in October, says BREADA Executive Director Darlene Adams Rowland.
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Managed by BREADA, the Main Street Market was first built in the early 2000s to serve as a companion concept to its Saturday Red Stick Farmers Market, and to add a creative retail element to the Galvez Parking Garage. Establishing an indoor public market was part of Plan Baton Rouge, the city’s original downtown revitalization plan. The Main Street Market held retail pods and small restaurant concepts. It was effectively Baton Rouge’s first urban food hall with concepts like Paul Wong’s Chinese & Sushi, FRESHJUNKIE Salad + Wraps, Southern Cofe and others. The market was a regular stop for many downtown workers during the week, and it attracted big crowds on Saturdays.
But after more than 20 years, it was in need of upgrades. The State of Louisiana, which owns the building, allocated $1 million toward the project. BREADA, which is a nonprofit, is raising funds for items beyond the state budget.
The long-awaited revamp, first proposed in 2013, accomplishes three big objectives, Rowland says.
One is better flow.
Main Street Market regulars will recall how crowded the indoor market got on Saturdays. Visitors would file in for a hot breakfast, to see a cooking demo or shop. But the narrow corridor made walking from one end of the building to the other difficult.
“If you got behind someone with a stroller, it was game over,” Rowland jokes.
The market’s west side now has no permanent retail pods. Instead, there is open, flexible space for temporary pop-ups and vendor stands. The new design leaves more room for crowds to comfortably maneuver.
Another goal of the renovation is to have better connectivity with the Red Stick Farmers Market, Rowland says.
“Many people who came to the farmers market still had no idea after all these years that there was an indoor market right here,” she says.
Improved signage and an intercom system announcing activities happening indoors will help draw crowds inside on Saturdays to visit vendors and restaurants and watch cooking demos.
The new changes will also help promote BREADA’s mission as an advocate for local foods, Rowland says. Throughout the building, bold, bright images of produce and farms will remind patrons of the mission to connect regional farmers to consumers.
All the programming in the building will also reflect that mission, including the types of restaurants selected to occupy the four restaurant pods. Each one will use fresh Louisiana produce and products with a local provenance on its menu, something that wasn’t a requirement for the Main Street Market’s previous restaurant tenants, Rowland says.
The space also features a BREADA teaching kitchen, complete with state-of-the-art equipment where chefs will demo how to use fresh ingredients from the market in home cooking. New AV equipment will film the demos, which patrons can watch on TVs throughout the space.
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“We are really excited about the test kitchen,” Rowland says.
The market will continue to offer plenty of seating for dining and relaxing. And bathrooms have also been significantly improved and relocated for convenience.
For more information, visit breada.org, and follow @redstickfarmersmarket on Instagram for updates on the new restaurant tenants.