Market upgrades

StartUp

Market upgrades

Published Oct 1, 2012 at 6:00 pm (Updated Oct 1, 2012)

As the Main Street Market celebrates 10 years in Baton Rouge in November, the downtown farmers market is looking forward to a facelift.

“We want to spruce it up and give it a new look, and we also want to address a few issues we've had with the crowd flow,” says Darlene Rowland, development director for BREADA, the market operator.

There's no firm estimate on when it may break ground or be completed, but it looks as if the project could at least be under way by the spring. At this point, the design phase is finished and the project will next be put out to bid. Baton Rouge-based Commercial Design Interiors completed the design. The Louisiana Office of State Buildings is partnering on the project, as is the LSU Interior Design Department.

Stylistically, the idea is to bring touches of the Main Street Market's art deco exterior inside, and evoke the feel of an old-fashioned farmers market, says Commercial Design Interiors owner and designer Matthew Edmonds.

“The service counters for the food vendors, for instance: They're designed to look like stacked up crates,” he says, noting the new signage and other interior features will complement the theme.

As the market has grown through the years, it has gotten a bit crowded. A reconfiguration of vendor areas will address the issue, but so, too, will the new terrazzo flooring, Edmonds says.

“The flooring is a very interesting and important piece,” he says, adding it's the idea of LSU design interns who assisted. “They took an old map of the Mississippi River from the 1860s and basically used it to create a path that traverses through the market.”

Having a state entity involved means the project won't move quickly, Edmonds says. The advantage, however, is that tempo has provided his team more time. That, paired with the attention paid to the project by the interns, he says, “has really shot this to the next level—which we're really happy about because we want to make sure that this is a jewel for Baton Rouge to showcase to all the people around the region.”

Click here to view a slideshow of the renderings.