After 45 Years, Eastern Market Seafood Will Close

Eastern Market continues to change as another long-time establishment is closing shop.

Eastern Market Seafood at 2456 Market Street in Detroit will close February 29, 2020, according to their social media.

The reason for the closure is owner John Janevski is retiring. He sold the building to Sanford Nelson’s FIRM Real Estate after a year of trying to find a buyer.

The shop served both wholesale and over the counter seafood and sausage sandwiches, and up until now has been a place where you can leave full spending less than $10.

A new, 5,000 square foot seafood shop is planned to take its place after a renovation is done to bring the structure up to modern safety and building code standards. I’m told the renovation cannot be done with a tenant in place.

The second story hasn’t been used for 40 years. The plans are to turn it into food production and event space.

Sanford Nelson has acquired a bunch of properties in the popularly known core of Eastern Market. Here’s a list of Eastern Market of controversial closures from Curbed.

Go Deeper: Last year we had a conversation with the head of the nonprofit Eastern Market Partnership, Dan Carmody about the soul of Eastern Market on our podcast. He shared that although everyone knows the Saturday market and the retail, the wholesale businesses few think about are almost all of the 2,500 or so jobs in the market. He has a goal of getting that up to 5,000.