James Beard Award-winning chef Spike Gjerde, the force behind Woodberry Kitchen, is gearing up to bring an Italian-inspired market to the renovated Whitehall Mill in Hampden. The project, called Ecco Market, is slated for the mill’s ground floor and is planned as a hybrid space: part production kitchen, part trattoria, part deli and part retail marketplace. Project materials describe the concept as a way to scale restaurant-level production while channeling more revenue to regional growers.
As reported by the Baltimore Business Journal, the market is part of Gjerde’s broader ecco/project expansion and is pegged for a space inside the historic Whitehall Mill complex. The early coverage links the plan to recent financing activity and notes that a full vendor lineup and opening date are still to be determined. Neighbors and local food-industry watchers say the idea tracks with a growing wave of production-focused food ventures popping up across the city.
Funding and footprint
Documents on the lending platform Steward show that Ecco Market LLC secured an $816,000 loan, funded on Jan. 30 to buy furniture, fixtures and kitchen equipment for the buildout. The listing outlines a roughly 5,000-square-foot fit-out with dedicated production, baking and pasta operations that will support both retail and wholesale distribution.
Why Whitehall Mill?
Whitehall Mill, at 3300 Clipper Mill Road, was redeveloped into apartments and commercial space by Terra Nova Ventures and has long carried plans for a ground-floor marketplace, giving it the bones to support a multi-vendor market paired with a production kitchen. Local reporting and historic records show the former mill has been steadily converted into mixed-use space over the past decade. Developers and restaurateurs say that evolution makes it an appealing home base for a concept that blends on-site production with public-facing retail.
Where this fits in Gjerde’s push
Gjerde, who took home the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic in 2015, has been rolling out new concepts under his ecco/project umbrella while keeping a strong emphasis on local sourcing. The Harbor Point announcement for La Jetée framed that bistro as the first restaurant in the new project, while Ecco Market is cast as the production-and-retail engine behind the same strategy. Together, the moves highlight an effort to use restaurant scale to send more dollars to Mid-Atlantic farms and fishers.
