A City-Owned Marketplace in East Harlem Gets a Makeover
La Marqueta, a city-owned marketplace, has been an East Harlem fixture for decades. Now, following the successful revitalization of the Essex Street Market on the Lower East Side, the city has renovated this uptown market. It kept a number of the existing tenants, added new ones, and has room for more.
Hot Bread Kitchen, which relocated from Queens about a month ago, is the anchor, with 4,600 square feet of space, half devoted to wholesale baked goods made by women in a program to train them for commercial baking. Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez, above left, who started the company, has the women bake breads and concentrate on ethnic baking that is part of their heritage, like tortillas, lavash and Moroccan flatbreads. The other half of the space is an incubator kitchen, outfitted by the city, for people who need a commercially licensed area to cook or bake products to sell. They can rent space for as little as $10 an hour. Support, like business advice, is also available.
Some new stands in the market are Breezy Hill Orchard, Berried Treasure, SpaHa Café for coffee and baked goods, and Viva Fruits.
La Marqueta, 1590 Park Avenue (115th Street). Hot Bread Kitchen products are sold in Greenmarkets, some stores and at La Marqueta, at Maame Yaa Adowaa’s stand.