Trip to the Market

As stock market prices continue to plummet, the current recession has had one benefit: notoriously expensive food is suddenly inexpensive. Including lobster, which recently sold for a mere $7.95 at the Lobster Place, located at the popular Chelsea Market.

“We’re selling just as much lobster,” said Ian MacGregor, president of the Lobster Place, New York City’s largest purveyor of live lobster. “Prices are down, and suddenly people are willing to buy lobster.”

The Lobster Place is just one of many tenants at the popular Chelsea Market, located on Ninth Avenue between 15th and 16th streets, which has come to symbolize the transformation of a gritty neighborhood into a vibrant culinary hub.

Despite the recent economic crisis, the upscale Market appears to be unaffected, as its stores are filled with locals and tourists alike who have come for the opportunity to buy fresh foods directly from wholesalers.

“Believe it or not, our wholesale operation has outgrown the space here, and the original vision for this market is definitely evolving,” he said. “If you take a walk around here, you’ll find no less than 15 luxury high-rise buildings going up, and now we view our tenancy here as a tremendous opportunity for retail expansion.”

“It has more than any food store that I’ve ever seen,” said Charlotte Garvey, a Maryland native who is spending the week in New York City with her husband. “And I’m surprised how inexpensive everything is. The produce here is some of the cheapest I’ve ever seen, but it all looks so fresh, and delicious.”

The present-day Chelsea Market is a product of investor Irwin B. Cohen, who in the 1990s purchased a handful of buildings that had once made up the headquarters of the National Biscuit Company, commonly known as NABISCO.

Completed in 1898 as the company’s bakery, the ovens were notorious for baking some of the world’s most famous biscuit and cookie brands, including Premium Saltines, Vanilla Wafers, Fig Newtons, Barnum’s Animal Crackers, and Mallomars. The building is however probably most famous for being the birthplace of the Oreo.

“When I was little girl, we used to buy Oreo cookies that came straight out of the oven, in fact they were still warm,” said longtime Chelsea resident, Marissa Shapiro. “Then we’d get a nice, cold bottle of milk on the way home, and sit on the front steps eating them.”

“A package was only a nickel back then,” added Shapiro. “With the way that the economy is now, I can’t afford to buy all of the extravagant products at the Chelsea Market. No sweets for me. Just my produce.”

In 1959, when NABISCO moved its operations to Fair Lawn, N.J., the complex was sold to investor Louis J. Glickman. With few tenants, the buildings slipped into disrepair throughout the 1970s and 1980s. When it finally reopened in the 1990s, the Market helped to gentrify not only west Chelsea but also the nearby Meatpacking District. Today, the Market is as a masterpiece of Chelsea, and despite the rough times, is as crowded as ever.

“I love it here,” said Eloise Parks, a longtime resident of Manhattan. “You can buy anything you want here. If you want wine, you can go to Chelsea Wine Vault. If you want the freshest produce, go to the Manhattan Fruit Exchange. It’s all here.”

When she first opened her bakery at the Chelsea Market in 1997, Eleni Gianopulos had never imagined that how successful the Market would become.

“I had no idea how much our retail business would take off,” said Gianopulos, whose bakery is called Eleni’s New York.

In August 2005, Gianopulos moved her bakery operations to a new 20,000-square-foot space in a warehouse building in Long Island City, and has decided to transform her Chelsea Market store into a full retail location, and now uses the entire ground-floor portion of her space at the Market for her retail business.

“Am I worried about the economy?” said Eleni Gianopulos, the owner of the popular Eleni’s New York bakery. “Of course not.”

“Everyone needs to eat,” she added. “As long as they continue to eat, we will continue to serve.”