Marketplace Design Center Is Up for Sale


The vast, capacious, ginormous, colossal, unbounded and tremendously large Marketplace Design Center building at 24th and Market is for sale. The building houses 40 design showrooms that cater especially to accredited designers who come alone or with clients when working on projects. While there are consumer hours, it’s rarely crowded, and walking the largely empty hallways often feels a little naughty, like hiding out in a department store after closing time. Bistro St. Tropez is the Design Center’s restaurant where you can eavesdrop on people who don’t cook talking about their Lacanche range, model Cluny 1800. It’s a lot of fun.

If the building is being purchased for alternative use–if the Center is being disbanded–our guess is a purchase by Comcast or Drexel or another nearby behemoth that could use more space. If the plan is to keep it the same and just have new ownership (current ownership dates back to 2002), well, we don’t know.

Asking price? Oh, maybe, $50 million?