Another Diner Gets New “Lease” on Life

Market Diner by striatic on Flickr.

The former Market Diner on the northeast corner West 43rd Street and 11th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen is planning to reopen–not replaced with hastily-built condos, but in use again as a diner! Word came last month that the diner would be returned to service, and yesterday it was confirmed that the opening will come in the first week of June.

The diner, which was built in 1962 by the DeRaffele diner-construction company, was shuttered in 2006 and faced an uncertain future. The new lesees James Athanasopoulos and John and Elias Tsinias will likely ditch the parking spaces that surround the current building for outdoor seating for 100 diners, and will also add a bar to the interior. The Tsinias family said about the rehab that “It’s going to be a 1950s diner outside and a more modern diner inside.”

The Tsinias family also owns the Cosmic Diner on West 52nd Street and 8th Avenue, and made a deal to pay less than the yearly half-million dollar rent that owners at the Moinian Group had hoped to fetch.

Market Diner photo in text by davidinmanhattan on Flickr.