Thanks for all of the interest over the past 24 hours! It’s cool that everyone is as excited about this as we are. I’ll do my best to paint a mind picture of what the vision is for Morrison’s Addition. TL;DR: no, please just read it. Answers a lot of questions 🙂
The market is designed to be a placeholder for a more permanent development. We envision the market being open for 3 -5 years then (finally, after almost 30 years of vacancy) selling the property to a developer who will build something permanent there.
The Urban Renaissance Group is the team behind this project. We’re taking on the task of raising money for the lot improvements, containers, etc and leasing out the spaces to vendors. I’ll talk about our funding efforts in a later post.
We have a small advisory board, along with your suggestions, that will help to curate the right mix of vendors. Anyone can apply to become one. Currently, the only vendors in the market will be prepared foods. Think food trucks, except immobile. If the city allows, we’ll open up a few non-food retail shops too. Our proposed site plan has 13 individual store fronts that will rent anywhere from $250 to $800 per month, excluding utilities. Most will be $250-$300 per container (a container is 20’x 8′ and can fit a kitchen +…perfect for most vendors ). Leases are flexible, on purpose, to allow rotation and new experiences every year. Some vendors will choose to sign long term leases and some will only choose to be seasonal.
There will be work and capital required to become a vendor. The containers will come modified (doors, windows etc), insulated along with electrical, plumbing & HVAC installed. The vendor will have to provide kitchen equipment + signage + and custom options and get the necessary permits/licenses from the city and health department. Fortunately, we’ll have a template to do so. Considering the cost to open a restaurant and/or food truck is $50,000 – $300,000, we think investing $5,000 – $15,000 in equipment for your container is a killer start-up opportunity.
We are shooting for an opening date early July 2012. Depending on how we raise money for the containers, we may open with a couple vendors and grow as we go. We already have some awesome vendors committed which is exciting!
We have already pitched the great folks in the Planning Department and we go in front of the Planning Commission in June for final approvals. We’ll need your support when the time comes!
If you’re interested in becoming a vendor, contact me at nick@theurbanrenaissancegroup.com.
Tomorrow we get our first container delivered from Chicago!!! Pictures and video footage to follow 🙂
Check out a Container Kitchen Layout Option  -I’ll post more later.
 Thanks,
Nick
Photo Cred: Proxy SFÂ
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