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Muhammad Pullum sells t-shirts on 125th Street, directly across from Mart 125, the former indoor marketplace where he worked for 13 years.

Mart 125 was opened in 1986 but has been shuttered for the last eight years.

"People came here, it was very good at one time," said Pullum.

The state opened Mart 125 in a building owned by the city, in the hope of helping get vendors off the streets to indoor stalls, to earn a living while learning how to start their own stores.

But that training never happened and the market never really took off, leaving people in the neighborhood wondering what happened.

"The concept must've been wrong, there had to be something wrong with the concept," said a local.

According to the city's Economic Development Corporation, which took control in 1997, that was the exact situation.

"Unfortunately the model just didn't work. By the late 1990s, most of the space there was empty or the people that were in the space were deep in arrears on their rent," said EDC President Seth Pinsky.

The city issued a mandate demanding rent, and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's administration evicted the last vendors in 2001.

But recently, the EDC has re-imagined the abandoned Mart 125 as a mixed-use location, with space for a tourist center, two cultural organizations and affordable housing.

Local politicians salute the move.

"It became a valuable piece of property that was going unutilized [sic] by the community, either by vendors or by residents. So something had to be done," said Manhattan Councilwoman Inez Dickens.

Next, a competitive bidding process will determine the developer for the site.

City officials hope to begin the build-out as quickly as possible.