Opening Soon: Bodega-Style Melody Market in Five Points

Fresh produce and grab-and-go lunches are coming to the Five Points neighborhood at Melody Market, set to open after Christmas at 2590 North Washington Street. Owner LaSheita Sayer, who is currently on the board of the Five Points Business Improvement District, describes it as a “New York bodega-style market” which will fill what she sees as a gap in this walkable neighborhood.

Sayer has lived in Denver for eighteen years and worked in Five Points for a decade; for four of those years, the office of the marketing agency she founded, ZoZo Group, was located in the space that she’s now transformed into Melody Market.

At ZoZo, co-workers noted the lack of lunch options in Five Points. In the past five years, five new apartment buildings have opened along Welton Street, between 21st and 26th Streets, with 1,100 new residential units. While her co-workers’ lunch needs gave her the initial idea to open a market, the new residences prompted Sayer to make that idea a reality. “Walkable communities have these small mini markets,” she notes. “Melody Market is contributing to the vision of how Five Points can be. The market will make it more comfortable to live here.”

Melody Market has been a year and a half in the making, and Sayer is beyond ready to open after multiple permitting and construction delays. Many of the challenges were related to preparing the space to have fresh food and vegetables, which Sayers says is a more complicated process than having a market full of packaged items. “But I was really invested in this idea of having fresh fruit and vegetables,” she adds.

Sayer sees Melody as a resource where neighbors can grab last-minute ingredients for dinner or a quick lunch on the way to work. “It’s your neighborhood place that maybe has that one item you need to finish your recipe,” she says.

She also wants the market to feed the neighborhood culturally. “Five Points has a story to tell,” Sayer says, adding that her aim is to extend the story that is told along Welton Street in the murals and plaques already present in the area.

Among those highlighted on signs and on the walls of the space are Olympic athlete Jesse Owens, author Alex Haley and soprano opera singer Leontyne Price. “These are the people that had the balls, the cojones, the audacity to be amazing before people allowed them to be,” Sayer notes, adding that they paved the way for her own success. She wants the pieces of art to blend into the market and “not look like a museum,” but still pique the curiosity of customers, whom she hopes will Google each person to learn more about these heroes.

Also included in the art is Ella Fitzgerald – fitting, as the market’s front door is directly across the street from the Rossonian, a large, now-empty building that formerly welcomed stars like Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington to perform within its walls when it was a jazz club.

On December 11, Sayer invited the community into the market for the first time. Although it won’t be open until after Christmas, shelves were lightly stocked with some of the goods it will carry, and a band entertained guests outside. Sayer says that tearing the paper off the windows the night before the party and looking onto the intersection that earns Five Points its name was exciting. “This is going to be our view every day,” she concludes.

Melody Market is located at 2590 North Washington Street and will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. For more information, visit melodymarketdenver.com.