The City of Nelson has decided to move the Wednesday downtown market to Cottonwood Park for the summer.
The public was given notice of this on May 29, and vendors were notified a few days earlier on May 26, according to the city's corporate officer Sarah Winton in an interview. She said the city has just lost its market coordinator, which partially explains the short notice.
For the past few years the market has run downtown on Baker Street on Wednesdays and at Cottonwood Falls Park on Saturdays. The announced change would see both markets running at Cottonwood Park.
The Wednesday market is set to open on June 4.
The main reason for the change, Winton said, is downtown traffic congestion and a parking shortage exacerbated by three major construction projects in the downtown core: the renovation of the Civic Centre in the 700 block Vernon Street, the construction of the transit exchange in the 300 block Victoria Street, and the seniors housing construction in the 600 block Vernon Street. She said there will be a number of smaller downtown projects as well this summer.
"That all has an impact on all of our downtown core," she said. "It has an impact on traffic flow."
Matthew Carr, the owner of Linden Lane Farms, which has sold its produce at the markets for many years, says this decision is "disappointing, untimely, and poorly communicated."
Carr said he communicates regularly with other vendors and he was a member of an advisory committee that included the city and vendors, but which has gradually become non-functional over the past year. He thinks such a representative group should have been involved in this decision, or at least that vendors should have been given more notice.
He said farm vendors can expect a drop in revenue this year because the Wednesday market will be deprived of casual downtown foot traffic including tourists.
Winton said the city surveyed market vendors in March and found that the amenities most important to them are free parking, drinkable water, washrooms, and access to electrical plugins.
Cottonwood Park offers all of those, she said, and the downtown site has none of them, with the exception of the portable washroom at the corner of Baker and Hall Streets.
"We definitely got the feedback that they (the vendors) would like these things," she said but added that the vendor survey did not ask about preferred market location.
But the city frequently gets feedback from the public on that, Winton said.
"We've gotten a lot of feedback, from not just vendors, about holding the market in a place that's more accessible to the public, doesn't impede traffic, has a lot of these amenities, and Cottonwood kind of checks all of those boxes. So yes, we are very concerned about the vendors and keeping the vendors happy, but we do have an extensive wait list."
She said that to satisfy the waiting list, the number of vendors at the market could be expanded at Cottonwood but not in the downtown location.
There are 27 vendors on the waiting list for the Wednesday market and 21 on the list for the Saturday markets.
"Cottonwood is a beautiful place to be, and it offers everything that is on that wish list from the vendors, as well as from the public, from community members," Winton said. "So I would really love to see it be successful at Cottonwood, and hope that the public supports it being down there."
Carr is pessimistic about that. He said that in 2020 the city moved the downtown market to Cottonwood and saw a drastic downturn in vendors and customers because the public was unaware of the Cottonwood location or unwilling to travel there. He expects the same will happen this time.
"I ordered seeds back in January, and we've been growing stuff since February. I have greenhouses and fields and plants that don't care about holidays or weekends or weekdays. They just keep growing, right? And so we have everything properly planned. And so how do you make any adjustments now? Is practically impossible."
Carr said in recent years his sales at the Wednesday downtown market have been 40 per cent higher than at Cottonwood on Saturdays. He said expects the same is true of artisans who depend on a street full of tourists.
Winton agreed that there is a public perception that Cottonwood Falls Park is farther from downtown than it actually is, and says the city plans to do an educational campaign about this.
To walk to Cottonwood from the 600 block Baker Street, she said, takes 15 minutes, and from the 200 Block Baker the walk takes five minutes.
