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September 16, 2021

Expansion on menu at Hartford’s Parkville Market

Terry Corcoran | Hartford Business Journal Parkville Market in Hartford.
By Terry Corcoran

The owner of the Parkville Market is looking at expanding the popular food and entertainment destination.

Carlos Mouta said among the things being considered for an adjacent building at the Park Street location are a fourth bar, a brewery event space and possibly establishing the market as a wedding venue.

“We’re trying to make it an entertainment district so that when you come, you have many things to do — eating, gaming, maybe even axe throwing,” he said.

He envisions the event space as a place for bands, comedy shows and jazz concerts, and is even considering a rooftop space.

“We’re adjusting the quote phase to figure out what we are going to do,” he said. “I know what we want but we may not be able to do 100% of it.”

Mouta opened his $5 million food hall in the summer of 2020 amid the pandemic. While things went well from July to around October 2020, it was a brutal winter for the market until around March 2021 when business picked up, he said.

“After 4 p.m., it was good or better than we expected but the lunch crowd was not there because fewer people were coming to work downtown,” Mouta said. “It hasn’t been as good as we expected but we’re still getting over 100,000 visitors a month and overall sales broke $1 million three months in a row — that’s gross sales for every vendor.”

Michael Freimuth, executive director of the Capital Region Development Authority, which helped fund the market, called it “a game changer.”

“Parkville is one of those areas where we have some substantial investment decisions to make over the next couple of years, including the expansion of the Parkville Market into its next building,” Freimuth said. “It’s been remarkably successful during a very difficult window. Right now, I still think it’s on a growth curve.”
 

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