La Marqueta Food Incubator

La Marqueta is a historic community marketplace in East Harlem owned by the New York City Economic Development Corporation.  Located under the elevated Park Avenue Metro-North viaduct, it is a successful urban economic incubator to support local entrepreneurial food-production businesses and is a vibrant part of the East Harlem community.

MHA designed the adaptive re-use of an existing empty 10,000 square foot building into a multi-tenant food production facility.  The project included façade restoration and construction of three separate tenant spaces with core and shell infrastructure designed to support production kitchen operations for up to four separate food production tenants – including walk-in coolers/freezers, dry storage, exhaust hoods/precipitators, gas distribution and underground central grease interceptor system.  MHA also performed master planning of an adjacent lot area extending two blocks south for passenger car parking and shipping/receiving operations serving the facility.