New market holds ribbon cutting in South Bend

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- After a long and sometimes rough road, the East Race Market, located on the ground floor of the new LaSalle Apartments, held its official ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday. 

"We have about three to four thousand items on the shelves, and we have a catalogue of about a hundred and twelve thousand items you can choose from, and so customers can text us a picture of a bar code or a product they want, and we can put it on the shelf on Tuesdays and Fridays when we get our deliveries," said Developer David Matthews. 

The new market offers a diverse selection of grocery items at competitive prices.

"Everyone's really excited, people have been walking through. We soft opened yesterday with a lot of really positive feedback," Matthews said. "We live across the street, our office is next door so we're, you know, local and dedicated to building up the East Bank neighborhood and downtown South Bend, and we're excited to just continue to grow our investment here in the neighborhood."

The market was first proposed in 2015, then scheduled to open December 2022 after two extensions of the deadline on the project. The delay has caused legal issues with the city, but Mattews has kept a positive attitude throughout the timeline of the project.

"My wife was pregnant. And she gave birth in January and our daughter turned five last week," Matthews said. "And now we have two kids, so from, you know, when we started the zoning project and being single and now married with two kids, a five-year-old and a one-year-old it's been quite a life journey as well as a construction project building through the pandemic."