Aiming to “optimise” the stall layout and operational facilities at Tamagnini Barbosa Market, enhance the business environment, and provide residents with a better shopping experience, an optimisation project will be launched at the wet market, where fish, meat, vegetables, and other goods stalls will be concentrated on the ground floor, while the first floor will be converted into a cooked food centre, public broadcaster TDM has reported.
Thursday’s report noted that within this month, stall relocation will begin by moving first-floor vendors to the ground level to continue business.
Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM) officials were quoted as saying by TDM that in terms of the overall layout, without major construction or demolition works, the existing stall locations will be adjusted to optimise public spaces, the interior layout and design of the stalls, while the ground floor will be reorganised based on the current product categories, featuring sections for fish, meat, chilled goods, vegetables, fruit, and traditional general merchandise stalls, the report said.
Meanwhile, the first floor will be transformed into a cooked food centre, relocating the existing cooked food stalls from the ground floor to the first floor and adding seating for diners to address the requests of cooked food vendors, adding that the optimisation project also reserves space for a future connection to the Macau Sports Park, allowing residents to directly access the market from the park in the future, according to the report.
The Macau Sports Park will be built on the plot of land where the now-defunct greyhound racetrack (Yat Yuen Canidrome) and its adjacent, currently still in-use Lin Fong Sports Centre are located. Construction is scheduled to get off the ground in the first quarter of next year.
The report pointed out that the bureau is currently making further preparations for the optimisation plan and will continue to communicate with vendors and industry groups through seminars and workshops, to gather feedback, adding that, once the optimisation plan is finalised, the bureau will assess whether conditions are suitable to proceed with related work, including public bidding for stalls, based on the actual situation.
Regarding parking availability near the market, the bureau pointed out that the public car park at the adjacent public housing estate, Toi Fai Building (台暉樓) is already operational, which could meet the parking needs of vendors and consumers, the report said.
Lam Wai Leng, the owner of Hong Kei Chilled Food, told the Post yesterday at the market that many market vendors have shut down due to a lack of customers since the COVID-19 pandemic, and over 50 percent of stalls in Barbosa Market are currently vacant, adding that her revenue is just enough to cover basic expenses amounting to a “a few thousand patacas”.
Lam said she hopes that the cooked food centre can boost consumption by attracting more customers, creating linked spending, and she suggested that the government can learn from the successful cooked food centre model of Iao Hon Market and implement comprehensive improvements: adding fresh flower stalls to diversify the range of products, solving parking issues by providing convenient parking facilities, and planning holistically to make the market more fully functional.
The owner of Iao Kei, a Chinese dessert vendor, which has been in operation since 1983, told the Post at Tamagnini Barbosa Market on Friday that she expected more customers after the optimisation project at Tamagnini Barbosa Market, adding that one of the challenges was moving her equipment and stock to the first floor of the future cooked food centre.
Currently, Macau has four wet markets equipped with cooked food centres – Iao Hon Vendors’ Market, Patane Market, S. Domingos Market, and S. Lourenço Market.
Lam Wai Leng, the owner of the Tamagnini Barbosa Market’s Hong Kei Chilled Food stall, poses after a Post interview at her stall yesterday. – Photo: Ida Cheong
