‘A big dream’: Familiar Rock Hill fish market moving to new location
Wearing a traditional Asian conical hat on a hot August day, Kelly Vu walked through a muddy parking lot to a building under construction on West Main Street.
Vu had driven less than a mile from her store, the Saltwater Seafood Market on West White Street, to its future location.
The current market, an unassuming brick building with faded posters of a business that reaches years into the past, sits across the street from the Cotton Factory and adjacent to the old Herald offices.
Inside the current market, a long cooler keeps a variety of seafood fresh under buckets of ice. A white board sign on the wall tells shoppers what they can purchase: freshwater fish, black bass, red snapper and even frog legs, snow crab legs and alligator meat.
“We have all kinds of stuff here, you name it,” Vu said.
Vu sold the White Street building a year ago to the City of Rock Hill, which will incorporate the property as part of the downtown Knowledge Park projects.
When construction on the future site, near the Clemons McCray Funeral Home, is complete later this year, the 4,500 square-foot business will include the seafood market with a possibility of a fast food component.
“Everything is brand new,” Vu said. “We’re building it ground up.”
Vu will hand the store’s reins to her sister Mai Vu when the property is complete.
“It’s a big dream,” Mai Vu said.
Kelly Vue said the business has been at the West White Street location and in her family for 12 years.
She said she wishes she could keep the old location.
“People know us,” she said. “They know we’re here.”
