For decades, the Horn & Horn restaurant chain had one of the most popular lunch spots in the city at 304 E. Baltimore St., a favorite with government employees at City Hall and the lawyers and bankers who worked in the surrounding business district. Former Mayor William Donald Schaefer was a loyal customer before it closed in 1976.
Horn & Horn “was mobbed at the noon hour,” The Baltimore Sun’s Jacques Kelly reminisced in a 2018 column. “Fans liked its fried eggplant, chicken biscuit sandwich and homemade ice cream. The restaurant was in the heart of Baltimore’s legal and legislative district (City Hall was a block away) and there was many a political secret exchanged on its bentwood chairs.”
Now a different chain is coming to Baltimore with hopes of appealing to diners the same way Horn & Horn did, in almost exactly the same location.
Zero Empty Spaces is the name of this food establishment, which will open this year in the former Big Apple Tree Café space at 300 E. Baltimore St. It‘s one of the 22 food-oriented businesses that have been selected to receive funds from the Baltimore Culinary Exchange grant program, designed to help fuel culinary growth and activate empty retail spaces in downtown Baltimore
The program is led by the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore and funded through Mayor Brandon Scott’s Downtown Rise initiative with support from the American Rescue Plan Act. In all, $1 million is being distributed to the 22 awardees, who were selected from 43 applicants. The recipients were announced this week, and grants ranged from $8,000 to $160,000.
Zero Empty Spaces is a business that seems tailor-made for the culinary exchange program. It’s almost as if the owners used Artificial Intelligence to evaluate the Downtown Partnership’s goals and prepare an application that would have a 100 percent chance of being funded.
Filling a need
Zero Empty Spaces was founded in 2019 and is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It’s headed by co-founders Andrew Martineau and Evan Snow.
As the name implies, its mission is to activate dormant retail spaces with tenants that fill a need in their respective communities. Since 2019, it has opened 33 businesses, mostly in Florida but in other states as well.
Many of the spaces it fills, including the Big Apple Tree Café space, were previously occupied by tenants that closed after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This will be its 34th location and its first in Maryland. Other locations include Natick, Massachusetts; Richmond, Virginia and Little Rock, Arkansas.
According to its website, Zero Empty Spaces provides affordable working artist studios, promotion and a collective and collaborative community environment in commercial storefronts in cities across the country.
It also has a Vacancy Activation Advisory that works with landlords and tenants to turn vacant commercial spaces into creative hubs, “boosting local economics and cultural vibrancy by supporting property owners, developers and artists through creative placemaking and community engagement.”
Its services include analyzing vacant properties and the surrounding areas; developing activation strategies and creating short- and long-term utilization plans. Most of its locations are artist studios. Some of its projects are in shopping malls that have lost anchor tenants.
Updated automat
At a press event on Thursday, Martineau and Snow said they plan to fill two adjoining retail spaces on the same block in Baltimore, part of the first level of a city-owned garage. The 5,200-square-foot Big Apple Tree Café space will house a commissary kitchen that will provide room and equipment for up to 20 culinary entrepreneurs to prepare meals that will be sold to the public. A second space at the base of the garage, with 3,200 square feet, was formerly occupied by a sign store and will be converted to artist studios.
The street-level retail spaces are managed by a division of the Otis Warren Group. Leases haven’t been approved yet by Baltimore’s Board of Estimates. Officials didn’t disclose how much money Zero Empty Spaces is getting from the grant program, but they said it’s one of the more sizable awards.
Martineau said the commissary kitchen won’t have seating like a restaurant, because most of the space will be devoted to food preparation by the individual entrepreneurs. He said the idea is to create a place where people can buy “grab and go” items to eat off-premises.
Along with the individual entrepreneurs, Martineau said, Zero Empty Spaces plans to provide space for an updated version of the automat – an ‘automatic cafeteria’ where cooked meals and beverages are served through a room-sized vending machine, typically without waiters. The world’s first automat opened in Berlin in 1895 and was considered a futuristic wonder.
In the United States, the automat was introduced by the Horn & Hardart chain in Philadelphia in 1902. It was so successful that New York City got one a decade later.
Horn & Horn is a separate business that was founded in 1908 in Baltimore. Its Baltimore Street location was a traditional restaurant, not an automat. Known for its cafeterias and buffets, including a popular one at The Rotunda, the Horn & Horn chain was acquired in 1955 by White Coffee Pot Family Inns Inc. At its height, Horn & Horn operated 11 buffets and cafeterias in three states; the last one closed in 1991.
In recent years, the automat has experienced something of a comeback. Martineau said he’s eager to bring the concept to downtown Baltimore.
Zero Empty Spaces is planning to open the commissary kitchen and the artist studios within the next few months. Information about the company’s leasing opportunities and other initiatives is available on its website at www.zeroemptyspaces.com.
