When Ben Hautt, founder and managing partner of Robles Partners, traveled with his wife to Seattle in the summer of 2023, he had no idea he would end up bringing Atlanta’s first indoor, year-round farmers market to the city’s Upper Westside. The project, three years in the making, weathered several false starts but is now officially open to the public. Unlike a traditional farmers market, Upper West Market combines permanent retail shops, rotating local farmers and a daytime café from acclaimed chef Anne Quatrano.
An Epiphany at Pike Place
The idea came to Hautt in a parking lot. His wife wanted to see Pike Place Market — a tourist stop the West Coast native figured he’d been to “a million times.” So he dropped her at the entrance and went looking for a place to park. That’s when it struck him: Georgia — in fact, all of Georgia — was missing a market like the one he was about to visit.
Hautt, a veteran of commercial development, spent nearly two decades leading Stream Realty Partners’ Atlanta office before founding Robles Partners in 2024. With Stream, he developed the projects that house several local staples — Bacchanalia, Star Provisions and Lazy Betty among them — as well as the Lee + White complex in West End. That track record made him an obvious candidate for the job.
A Nook Off Collier Road
Upper West Market is tucked into the Upper Westside just off Collier Road in the industrial pocket of Underwood Hills at 1385 Collier Road NW. “It’s a great little nook,” Hautt said of the location. “I think people don’t realize how close it is to Pace, Westminster and Lovett. And it’s also away from a lot of the craziness on Howell Mill.”
Inside the bright 9000 square foot warehouse, 35 open-air stalls line the vendor floor. Several vendors have taken up permanent residence in the industrial space, while local farmers can sell their produce day to day. Hautt’s idea was twofold: create an indoor market unique to Georgia, and give local farmers a place to sell without the financial burden of rent. “What if we didn’t look to get rent from the farmers and the local producers and just see if the parking will subsidize it? And so that’s what we did. We charge the normal Atlanta $3-an-hour rate, and all the farmers get subsidized,” Hautt said. “We just charge them operating expenses, the same daily rate that they would pay at a normal farmers market.”
Pedestrians can skip the parking fee altogether: neighbors can walk or bike in on nearby paths. “So this location has all this connectivity,” Hautt said.
Now Brick and Mortar
The choice of retail vendors was intentional. “We have a lot of these known brands within the farmers market community. And then this is the first brick-and-mortar store that they’ve ever had,” Hautt said. “They’ve been setting up and tearing down every Saturday for pretty much their entire lives. This gives them a chance to actually have a solid base to operate from.” Among them: Woodland Wellness, Prana Kitchens, Bellwood Coffee and Georgia Peach Truck. Woodland Wellness founder Petals Bradley is “the farmers market queen,” Hautt said.
One of the first stalls that shoppers see when they walk through the market is White Oak Pastures, a zero-waste, regenerative farm out of Bluffton, Georgia, known for its grass-fed beef and pastured poultry. The stall itself is an exact replica of the farm’s general store.
A welcome addition to the market is Summerland, a daytime breakfast-and-lunch café from Anne Quatrano, the James Beard Award-winning chef behind Bacchanalia and Star Provisions. A wine bar from Hop City — a first for the Atlanta beer and wine retailer — is also planned for the space, along with a Bodyrok and additional office space available for lease
A Story Behind the Unique Interior
“There’s a story behind almost everything,” Hautt said. The green columns are an ode to Borough Market in London. The windows into the bakery come from a family trip to Italy, where his kids stood watching people make pasta. Copper water pipes run exposed so shoppers can see where the water flows, and patches of the building’s original metal floor were left in place rather than poured over with concrete — a glimpse of the space’s industrial history.
The rooster by the bathrooms is an Easter egg for Cagle’s, the poultry company that originally built and occupied the facility. “That’s our nod to the Cagle family,” Hautt said. Even the Upper West Market sign is an ode to the Pike Place Market sign that sparked the idea — though not a copy. “There’s different little Easter eggs planted all the way around,” he said, “which kind of makes it special and unique and not necessarily sterile.”
Uncharted Regulatory Territory
The idea for Upper West Market has faced myriad delays — in part because regulators had never seen anything quite like it, pushing the initial summer 2025 opening date back nearly a year. “From a regulatory standpoint, we had to work with the city of Atlanta on something that’s never been done. We also had to work with the Georgia Department of Agriculture on something that’s never been done. And then also the Fulton County Health Department. City, county and state have all touched this development,” Hautt said. “We encountered some things that we didn’t anticipate encountering.”
Worth The Wait
Those hurdles are behind him now. Upper West Market held its grand opening Aug. 1, and Hautt is already learning the space’s rhythms: a week into the soft opening, traffic peaked around lunchtime, so the plan is to program mornings, afternoons and the bar at night. A book nook invites kids to grab a book and stay for story time, cooking classes and seasonal events are on the calendar, and the holidays will get the full treatment. “Santa, the whole deal,” Hautt said. “Christmas, Thanksgiving, all the things.”
Three summers after the idea struck him in a Seattle parking lot, Hautt’s answer to Pike Place is open seven days a week off Collier Road.
