Big Changes In Store For The Chelsea Market

Chelsea Market has had a pretty stable set of retailers since it opened, but recent changes and more to come could spark something of a makeover for the popular collection food stores.
Looking for flowers? Keep walking. The prominent Chelsea Wholesale Flower Market, once the first store you would see at the Ninth Avenue entrance, is gone, and there is talk about breaking up the 8,500 square foot space and opening it's windows to the street to attract a higher profile tenant. Frank's Butcher Shop and Steakhouse is also gone, its 5,300 square feet also currently vacant, and the Manhattan Fruit Exchange is in a legal dispute with its landlord. Even the newsstand has been shuttered as rents throughout the market have reportedly tripled.
One suspects that the rise of the Meatpacking District social scene has encouraged landlords to go for more glamorous nightlife-oriented tenants, but doesn't that defeat the complex's original purpose as an eclectic collection of food retailers and restaurants?
Chelsea Market's growth spurs closings (The Real Deal)