Redlands Public Market in Historic Packing House Battles Slow First Year After $11 Million Overhaul

When brothers and developers Jerry and Ed Tessier first walked into the long-vacant citrus packing house just north of downtown Redlands about eight years ago, it was hard to picture families lining tables under its soaring steel beams.

“It was broken into, vandalized. It was red tagged. It was a shell of a building. It was leaking from the roof. It was, I mean, it was bad,” Tessier said.

Today, after a roughly $11 million restoration and years of delays, that same historic structure has reopened as Redlands Public Market, a food hall and gathering space that Tessier hopes residents will treat as a source of civic pride as much as a place to eat — even as its first year has fallen short of the sales he anticipated.

“We’re hanging in there,” he said. “Honestly, it’s not doing the sales that we thought to start out with, like we have at our food lab in Riverside.”

Tessier said the pressures the market is feeling mirror what independent operators are facing nationwide as food and labor costs rise and customers become more cautious.

“Definitely, this is a challenging time for restaurants,” he said. “Profit margins are thin. You know, costs are higher. People are watching their wallet, especially in the last six months.”

Portions of the former citrus packing house date back to the 1890s, when Redlands was a hub for orange growers. It is recognized as the city’s last remaining packing house of its kind and part of a larger historic depot district. The city eventually bought the deteriorating building after it shut down and later sold it to Arteco Partners, the Tessier family’s Pomona-based firm, which specializes in adaptive reuse of historic properties.

“My parents started the company under a different name 40 years ago, kind of buying and renovating apartments,” Tessier said. His father built a law office in downtown Pomona in the 1960s, and the family later shifted toward renovating old commercial buildings. “So it was in our blood.”

After graduating from Pomona College with an urban sociology degree, Tessier’s brother, Ed, focused on downtown Pomona’s blight and “urban flight.”

At one point, Tessier said, there hadn’t been a new business license pulled in downtown Pomona for a decade. To get things moving, his brother opened a coffee shop himself.

“The first business in downtown Pomona in 20 years was a coffee shop that he and a partner had to open and operate because no one else would,” Tessier said.

Since then, Arteco Partners has renovated a dozen buildings in Pomona, including the 2,000-seat Fox Theater, and gone on to projects in Claremont, Ontario, Riverside, Corona, Temecula and now Redlands. In 2019, the company opened Riverside Food Lab, which Tessier describes as the Inland Empire’s first food hall.

“Redlands was supposed to be the first food hall, and then this got delayed because the city wanted to go through that RFP process, and then we ended up doing the food lab,” he said.

Redlands’ project required navigating city approvals, state regulators and the National Park Service because of the building’s historic status. Tessier said the city initially asked him to take a look at the property and make a proposal, then decided to issue a formal request for proposals that took about a year. After that came years of design and review.

“It may even be nine or 10 years,” he said of the full timeline from first walkthrough to opening. “We had been working on it for years. And then, you know, COVID-19 happened, so we just put a pin in it and waited it out a couple more years.”

By March 2020, Tessier said, he had a construction loan approved and was ready to start, but the onset of the pandemic forced him to halt the project. Construction ultimately started in early 2023 and took a little more than two years, finishing in March 2025.

“The seismic retrofit itself cost a couple million bucks,” he said. “The first eight to 10 months of the project was just seismic retrofitting. That’s just the starting point of having a building, a structure that you can then bring in your utilities.”

Inside, the market preserves the original corrugated metal ceiling, clerestory windows and brick shell while layering in new steel bracing and modern systems.

“The ceiling, as you see, if you look up, you’ll see the original corrugated ceiling, the original everything,” Tessier said. “One of the great things about Redlands Public Market is you walk in and you have all that natural light. Kind of feels like you’re in an old train station.”

Before its restoration, the building had been vacant since around 2000 and owned by the city for roughly a decade when Tessier first saw it. He said there were half-demolished walls, trash, bird carcasses, signs of people living inside and scorched walls that suggested minor fires.

“As horrible as I’m making it sound, it was actually not the worst building that I’ve walked into and then later purchased and renovated,” he said. “But this building needed everything.”

Local firefighters, he added, have told him they are “amazed this building didn’t burn down” during the 20 years it sat empty.

At one point, the building was in escrow with a buyer who planned to demolish it.

“This building was slated for demolition,” Tessier said. “So we were really part of the effort to save the building and not see it demolished. And if it was vacant another couple years, it probably would have burned down.”

He praised Redlands city staff for supporting the vision.

“Honestly, Redlands was one of the best, if not the best cities to work with in this whole process,” he said. “Maybe it was because they wanted to see this project happen, but honestly, it was pretty great working with the city.”

Redlands Public Market opened in March 2025 with about 20 food and beverage businesses, plus a downstairs speakeasy-style bar and a small arcade. Tessier said the mix is heavily weighted toward independent, locally owned operators, many of them first-time brick-and-mortar tenants whose experience ranges from farmers markets to food trucks.

“Almost all of our businesses and tenants are startups or they’re opening their second location,” he said. “We were dealing with entrepreneurs, local business people, startups, mom and pops.”

“We don’t like renting to franchises,” he added. “We’ve rented a couple times to franchises and almost every time it hasn’t worked out for the tenant. So I’m a firm believer in independent, locally owned businesses.”

He estimates that roughly 80% of the company’s tenants across projects are minority- or women-owned.

“Having a diversity of ownership that reflects the actual population, as opposed to your lack of diversity of ownership in corporate America,” he said. “It just speaks to, I think, our values as a company, as a family, to be supportive of the local community and give back.”

The food hall model, Tessier said, is designed to lower the barrier to entry.

“The food hall model is set up to make it more likely that a local, an entrepreneur, will succeed,” he said. “If you had to go build out your own restaurant, it probably would cost over half a million dollars. Here you can probably open for 20% of that, probably for a hundred thousand bucks, with buying your equipment, signage, and all the basic work.”

Arteco builds out most of the infrastructure so tenants can focus on equipment and finishing their stalls.

“We need to incubate spaces,” Tessier said, adding that some of the firm’s live-work units across Southern California combine a storefront and an apartment to help tenants afford rent.

Redlands Public Market’s vendors span barbecue, burgers, Mediterranean dishes, Indian cuisine, brunch and more. Tessier said curating that lineup meant turning away some concepts and hunting for others.

“You have to curate it, right? You can’t just take anyone that’s interested,” he said. “We probably had three or four pizza shops interested. But then we also really wanted a lot of unique, fusion cuisine.”

“It’s not a science. It’s an art,” he added. “Just picking the right ones and what’s the right mix.”

Not every experiment has succeeded. The original coffee shop closed, and a new shop is expected to take its place. Tessier said that kind of turnover is “not uncommon,” noting a similar early change at Riverside Food Lab.

Downstairs, the basement houses “My Friend’s House,” a speakeasy bar Tessier co-owns with partner Alex Teran, who operates Game Lab in Riverside.

“The inspiration is ‘That 70s Show,’ and they went to the basement,” Tessier said. “It’s that vibe, but it’s more like late 80s, 90s.”

Guests enter through a hidden doorway tied to a small video game, then descend a spiral staircase into a room with old consoles, a dartboard and 1990s music. Tessier described it as “a good date night or celebration spot.”

For all the nostalgia inside, the economics outside are firmly post-pandemic. Tessier said Redlands Public Market opened into an environment where takeout and delivery remain strong and dining habits have shifted since COVID-19.

He said the average restaurant now does roughly 30 percent of its business in takeout, with some models closer to 70 to 80 percent.

Still, he is betting that the concept — and the building — will resonate as more people discover it.

“We’re still getting the word out,” he said, noting that about three-quarters of customers currently come from Redlands. “We know Redlands has a bigger trade area, bigger catchment and we want to get the word out.”

He said word-of-mouth remains the best marketing, backed by events and social media. The market hosts bands on weekends, a kids’ “Sunday Funday,” karaoke, trivia nights and plaza rentals for birthday parties and corporate functions. Tessier expects those events to draw visitors from surrounding cities over time.

“So much in marketing and outreach is social media these days,” he said. “People have a great experience. The more the groups and events happen, the more people are opening up.”

Breakfast options open at 8 a.m. daily, and the market operates seven days a week, staying open late into the evening, with exact closing times varying by day.

Tessier said his pitch to residents choosing between the public market and a chain restaurant comes down to community.

“I think what’s great about Redlands Public Market is you can come with your family, with your group of friends, everyone can choose what they want to eat,” he said. “It’s relaxed, there’s good food, and there’s a sense of community. You’re supporting local businesses and it feels less transactional than just going to, you know, your local corporate restaurant.”