Work Starting on Fashion District's Gamechanging City Market

Just last month we got our first peek at HansonLA's renderings for the roughly 10-acre, $1-billion Fashion District megaproject City Market, which is expected to take 20 years to complete. But! Phase one, City Market South, is already on the way, according to a release from City Councilmember Jose Huizar, which says that "[c]onsruction for City Market South is expected this June with projections for the site to be operational by the summer of 2015." This phase will reuse 75,000 square feet in existing buildings and create creative office space and "gourmet retail offerings" that will cater to the "workers, shoppers, food lovers, and artisans" who will inevitably be drawn to the site.

City Market South sits on the southern end of the whole property (San Pedro and San Julian between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets) and includes eight warehouses. As noted by the LA Business Journal, many of the warehouses have those handsome industrial-chic details that can be seen in a lot of successful Arts District spaces, like "bow-truss ceilings, concrete floors and other popular architectural details."

The way the property owners see it, City Market South is a small but very important part of the project, since it has the job of getting people to even come that deep into the Fashion District in the first place. "City Market South will set the table for this larger, catalytic project," says Peter Fleming, chief executive of City Market of Los Angeles, "Once it's done, there's going to be people here after 6 o'clock; there's going to be life and activity." (Flemming is also the grandnephew of one of the original founders of City Market, back when it was an actual produce market in the early Twentieth Century.)

The developers plan to spend more than $10 million on the first phase of the project. Financing has been lined up and City Market South is expected to be ready for office move-ins in about a year. Restaurants and shops will come about six months after that, if all goes according to plan. Fleming is hoping to have final approvals for the entire huge City Market project and have a "master developer in place" before the year's end.
· Behold: First Look at Fashion District Megaproject City Market [Curbed LA]