After six years behind Downtown Home & Garden on Washington, Mark’s Carts will end for good on Halloween. Founder Mark Hodesh told us that while the popular street food hub was enjoying success, the work required to keep the courtyard going was becoming a burden. “It’s keeping track of six to eight different private entrepreneurs. They rent space in the kitchen, and for their cart, and they all have different family commitments, different willingness to work, different expectations … It’s a little physical work, but it’s a lot of mental work.”

Hodesh sold the Downtown Home & Garden business to Kelly Vore shortly after turning seventy in 2014, but he’s still not retiring fully: he became sole owner of Bill’s Beer Garden last spring, and still owns the Downtown Home building and the former union hall across the alley at 208 W. Liberty (currently a psychiatrist’s office with the cart’s commercial kitchen in back).

Hodesh plans to turn 208 W. Liberty into one cohesive space to be rented out to a restaurant that can work in tandem with Bill’s Beer Garden which, he assures us, will continue next season. He hopes to have the new restaurant open by spring.

“It was a nice experience, we had a great time,” he says of Mark’s Carts. “Made some people happy, made some people money, brought some people a pretty inexpensive way to start in the restaurant business and dip their foot in,” Hodesh reminisces, “and then some others didn’t do well and it was a pretty inexpensive way to not get in the restaurant business too!”

While not every cart has succeeded, many former cart owners, including those from The Lunch Room, Eat Catering & Carry-out, Miss Kim (formerly San Street), and now Everest Sherpa (see above), have moved on to brick-and-mortar success.

If you’re hoping to get a few final fall meals in, the current seven tenants are Pita Cruiser, Hut-K, El Manantiel, Simply Spanish, Great Grilled Sandwiches, Everest Momo, and Wood Fired Up. Hodesh says he doesn’t know where all of them will end up next year, but that he’s encouragingly heard at least “some gossip.”

The carts’ leases go through October 31, but Hodesh says there’s a good chance they’ll leave after the beer garden closes on Saturday, October 28, or even earlier if cold weather sets in.

Mark’s Carts, 211 W. Washington, 662-8122. Hours vary by cart and weather. markscarts.com