Pasang Nepali, who manned the last remaining tent, Meredith's Bread, at the Albany Street Greenmarket, said in mid-December that rainy Tuesdays had been slowing down her business. The other vendor, Red Jacket, left earlier that month. Photo: Amanda Woods/Tribeca Trib
Three vendors were expected to set up their tents in September when a Tuesday Greenmarket opened on Greenwich Street at Albany, on the sidewalk outside the fenced former queuing area for the 9/11 Memorial—now transformed into Albany Plaza. But one of the vendors backed out before the market even opened, another left in mid-December––and on Jan. 6, the last of the three was gone.
Meredith’s Bread, a Kingston, NY baker that sold a variety of breads, pastries and quiches, could not sustain its business into the new year.
“Basically, there was a real lack of foot traffic and sales,” said Michael Hurwitz, the director of Greenmarket for GrowNYC, which runs markets throughout the city.
Hurwitz said that Red Jacket, a vendor of apples, pears and juices, was losing money week after week. “They finally just said, ‘We can’t remain here,’” he said.
For Pasang Nepali, who was manning the Meredith’s Bread stall, weather contributed to the poor sales.
“Every Tuesday, [it was] rainy or windy or something, so business was very bad,” she told the Trib in December.
Last fall, Pasang’s daughter, Chimi Lhantso, noted that their former location, on West Broadway at Barclay Street, was more successful because it attracted office workers in the morning. That market was forced to move because of the construction of security barriers.
Hurwitz said he knew that the location “would be a challenging site from the outset,” but the support of the Downtown Alliance, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Community Board 1 made it “absolutely worth giving it a shot.”
At a CB1 meeting last summer, when the new Greenmarket was first announced, GrowNYC Greenmarket and Downtown Alliance officials had said that a successful market could expand beyond the sidewalk and into the fenced Albany Plaza.
Hurwitz said that this is the first time in 15 years that a Greenmarket hasn’t been within at least a block of the World Trade Center, but he holds out hope that it can return, noting that GrowNYC would “love” there to be a market in front of One World Trade Center, just as there had been until Sept. 11, 2001. Since then, he said, the WTC Greenmarket has been moved from one location in the area to another five times.
“It’s upsetting that we are no longer in the vicinity,” Hurwitz said. “We just wanted to maintain our presence here for the community and for our growers.”