BALTIMORE — After for what's been a decade-long wait for some, on Tuesday, January 31st, Baltimore's Lexington Market officially celebrates the reopening of its doors.
The market which is one of the country's longest running markets at just over 230 years, is in a new space with a new look just a block away from its previous location.
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Lexington market's redevelopment has seen a series of delays, one of which was the COVID-19 Pandemic, but people behind the project and its dozens of local vendors officially welcomed in the public for the market's grand reopening. Paul Ruppert, the president and CEO of the Baltimore Public Markets Corporation, talked with WMAR-2 News's Randall Newsome about what it meant to see all the work pay off ahead of the ribbon cutting.
"This has been a long 10-year process to get where we are today," Ruppert said. "It's been a challenge, especially during the pandemic, but it's really been exciting to get where we are today."
Ruppert wants Lexington Market to give people the atmosphere of a festival.
"It's where everyone is welcome," he said. "Great foods you can either eat here or take home and it's also a gathering place where we have events and everyone can come."
For vendors like Gerdyn "G" Mojica, owner of Tio G's Empanadas and Latin Kitchen, it's an opportunity to be a part of the market's fresh start with the community and to take advantage of a new spotlight on his business.
"It means everything," Mojica said. "It allows us to do the work that we want to do in the community." Mojica started his restaurant alongside his brother, after the COVID-19 Pandemic started making him think twice about his career.
"After talking to my wife we decided that it just made more sense for me to go on and pursue what I actually wanted to do which was start putting together my own food business," Mojica said. "I've always wanted to be a restaurateur, I've always wanted to employ myself and provide opportunity to those in the community [and] provide opportunities to my family."
When people eat at Tio G's they get a taste of his family's Afro-Latino culture.
"I grew up with my dad hand rolling dough and my mom making the fillings," he remembered. "So I took the two together, worked on the recipes a little bit so that we could do it for the masses and we came up with Tio G's Empanadas man."
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Mojica, though, wants people to know his restaurant is about more than just being successful in the kitchen. He wants to truly make an impact.
"We have our pay it forward program where we take in donations to allow us to provide hot meals for those who are less fortunate and can't have hot meals," Mojica said. He believes Lexington Market is a good fit for what he's doing inside and outside of the kitchen.
"We have a little bit of something for everybody. There are groups of people that come here on a day to day basis that their sense of community is stronger than any that I've seen.
They sit down and have dialogues about what's going on in the city of Baltimore and how it can be impacted and I think more people need to be a part of that conversation."
The ribbon cutting ceremony for the new market building is set for today at 11:30.
Lexington market will feature nearly 50 vendors. Ruppert says about half of those vendors, market visitors from years past will be familiar with. The other half are brand new.
According to its website, Lexington Market opened in 1782, as "an informal meeting place for the exchange of goods." its name changed from Western Precinct's Market to Lexington Market in 1818. In fall of 2022, the market held a soft opening after its permanent closing of the East Market on September 3rd.
"You're going to see a lot of the old vendors but also some new, so I think that's really our strength as a mix of the old and the new," Ruppert said.
For more information on the market, click here.
