More than three years after their stalls were damaged in a fire, over 180 vendors have returned to the San Cosme market in Mexico City.
A fire broke out in the inner-city market on Dec. 22, 2019, damaging some 1,000 square meters of the commercial facility.
Just over 37 months later, affected tenants have moved into new stalls, the newspaper Reforma reported Thursday.
“We’re happy because we’ve lived through a lot of adversity,” said Estanislao Choperena, leader of a tenants’ group.
“But finally today this refurbishment encourages us to move forward and embark on a new path.”
Tenants operated makeshift stands on the street outside the market while they waited for the refurbishment to finish. The project cost 43.1 million pesos (US $2.3 million), with 23 million pesos coming from an insurance company and the remainder from the Mexico City government.
The new stalls were ready in late October, but tenants didn’t move back into the market at the time due to an insurance issue that prevented them from modifying the stalls in any way.
There were also fires at Mexico City’s Merced and Abelardo Rodríguez markets in December 2019. Faulty electrical infrastructure was identified as the cause of all three blazes.
With reports from Reforma
