An eyesore in the northern side of Eastern Market will be redeveloped in the next couple years, and a new tenant was announced this week. The former Detroit Water and Sewerage Department building at 3500 Riopelle, across from the Roma Cafe, will be home to a new food hall and rooftop bar, according to reports in Crain's and the Metro Times.
The Mosaic will include a 25,000-square-foot food hall led by Robert Montwaid, who built food halls in New York and Atlanta. Montwaid will also build a 4,000-square-foot rooftop bar at the site. The Mosaic as a whole is being redeveloped by Detroit-based Ventra LLC and Calgary-based developer Halcor Group. The site is about 105,000 square feet in total.
L.S. Brinker is the general contractor for the development and Quinn Evans is architect of record. McIntosh Poris Associates is the design architect. Construction starts soon on the food hall and could be completed next year. The entire $33 million project could be done in 2024.
The building has been abandoned by decades and is currently a vandalized shell of a building. It sits just a couple of blocks away from one of the entryways to the Dequindre Cut.
Food halls started popping up in Detroit in 2018. The Monroe Market opened in the Greektown Casino, and the popular Detroit Shipping Company opened in Cass Corridor. The Fort Street Galley downtown also opened in 2018, but closed right before the pandemic.
