Chelsea Market is celebrating its twenty fifth anniversary this month, however the High Line food emporium hasn’t at all times been a culinary mecca for upmarket foodies and chefs.
Chelsea Market is most famous for revitalizing a rundown section of the West Side. But in an exclusive interview with Side Dish, its 88-year-old founder Irwin Cohen revealed a wild ride that has included Russian money, ex-KGB security and a tie-up with US government agencies following the devastating terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Within the early Nineteen Nineties, the lifelong Latest Yorker cooked up the concept to open a grocery store that might mix wholesale and retail elements to advertise local entrepreneurs and artisans. But Cohen didn’t have the cash to make it occur due to a recession that had frozen bank loans.
So he turned to the free-flowing spigot of money shooting out of Russia after the autumn of the Soviet Union. Russian investors helped him snap up the assemblage of 17 buildings – spanning town block between West fifteenth and West sixteenth streets, and book-ended by tenth Avenue and eleventh Avenue – for just below $11 million.
The buildings were once home to the Nabisco Factory, maker of the Oreo cookie, but were now a group of dilapidated structures infested with feral cats and “100 years of garbage,” Cohen said.
Within the Nineteen Nineties, founder Irwin Cohen got here up with an idea to open a grocery store.Chelsea Market
The location had also played host to a gruesome triple-murder within the late Eighties. Two men had been executed within the basement and a 3rd man died from his wounds in what seemed to be a robbery.
Outside wasn’t any safer. The one booming business was prostitution on the otherwise deserted streets.
“It was a really very tough neighborhood,” Cohen said. “Going to work on daily basis was a bit of dangerous. In actual fact, my Russian investors needed to send over retired KGB agents.”
But flush with the Russian money, Cohen and his daughter Cheryl implemented their idea of “having only wholesale food suppliers who would also then go right into a small part” of the retail business.
Chelsea Market opened on Nov. 12, 1997.Colin Miller
It was a daring move for somebody who didn’t know anything concerning the food industry. Latest Yorkers, he said, care about clothing, food and shelter.
Earlier in his profession, Cohen had “a number of garment center tenants, so I didn’t need to construct factories or showrooms, and I had also managed a number of apartments all around the United States, so we were left with food, and all of us need it.”
The 2 focused on bringing in women entrepreneurs when Chelsea Market opened on Nov. 12, 1997. At the beginning, Cohen said, “67% of our owners were women.”
Those included Amy Scherber, of Amy’s Bread, and Sarabeth Levine, of Sarabeth’s.
The concept took off and so did the neighborhood as town cracked down on crime to shed its seedy image.
Then got here the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Cohen and his daughter quickly turned Chelsea Market right into a staging point to coordinate food and supplies for first responders.
“We had vans and trucks going 24 hours a day with food and supplies from Chelsea Market all the way down to Ground Zero, and we supplied many of the provisions for all of the individuals who were working down there.” Cohen said.
The Chelsea Market’s business model helped his tenants stay afloat within the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Colin Miller
Because the rebuilding began, Cohen landed federal contracts to develop offices for vital government agencies after the Twin Towers fell.
“I used to be chosen to rebuild the intelligence operations that were destroyed on 9/11,” said Cohen, a son of immigrants from Russia and Poland who grew up in Brooklyn.
“We had the joint terrorist task force and arranged crime and money laundering for the Drug Enforcement Administration, and various other operations,” he continued. “That was really the joys of my life, to have the ability to work for the US government.”
The Chelsea Market’s business model helped his tenants stay afloat within the aftermath of the attacks.
The High Line runs by Chelsea Market.Colin Miller
“When 9/11 occurred, our tenants told me that my idea of wholesale with retail was what saved their business lives, because people stopped going out to restaurants but that they had good quality food…with good prices,” Cohen said.
By 2003, the ex-Soviet investors were out, Cohen said. Real estate firm Jamestown bought 75% of the business, said Michael Phillips, president of Jamestown, which can be behind Brooklyn’s Industry City and Ghiradelli Square in San Francisco.
In 2018, Google paid $2.4 billion to snap up the once-languishing property.
“I believe that we did something good by getting the market began, and I used to be really privileged to have the ability to work with my daughter and provide you with this whole idea,” Cohen said. “The indisputable fact that it has survived this long is absolutely a credit to the individuals who live in Latest York City. They support it, and now we’ve something that has grow to be the model for other similar organizations throughout the world.”