We have had a number of readers ask us what is going on with efforts to save the Magnolia Farmer?s Market. Last November the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance (NFMA) announced that the market would not open in 2011 unless the Magnolia community could come up with at least $20,000 of community support.
We checked with Nancy Gellos who is leading the community effort to keep the market. Here is what she told us about the fundraising:
We are pleased to report that the Magnolia Farmer’s Market is moving
forward with the commitment from our community. Our goal is to raise $12,000 by the opening day of the market, June 18th. Fundraising is being approached as a community effort ? residents, local businesses and community organizations ? contributing to building a vibrant, sustainable market in our neighborhood. Doing it together, is a demonstration that our neighborhood farmer’s market is about community.
We need your donations, time, and talent! Volunteers are needed to help chair a few functions (music, kids? activities, street closure, fundraising and volunteer coordinator) and work a few hours of time each week or a couple times a month to these activities/duties. The Magnolia Farmers Market is scheduled to run June 18 until Sept 24. . If you can volunteer, please send an email to: magmarketvolunteer@gmail.com. Also, remember to shop at the market each week. As small business owners, our farmers need our support. While you are at it, visit a business in the Village that morning, too. Keeping your dollars in the neighborhood helps insure a lively, vibrant community center.
Contributions to the market may be made online here. Make sure to specify the Magnolia market for your donation. Previous Magnolia Voice coverage here.
Meanwhile, the Olympic Sculpture Park Farmer?s Market has announced that it will be moving to Interbay. It will be open on Thursdays throughout the summer, starting on June 9 at 3p.m. It will be located at the Interbay Urban Center, just north of the Magnolia Bridge in the Whole Foods complex.
As I understand it, the market will no longer be in the community center parking lot. It’s going to be on 33rd in the Village…unless I have been misinformed. Middle on the action seems like a nice move. Maybe give it a higher profile.
and do we know how much money has already been collected to throw down this hole?
Just curious…why do you think it’s a hole? What is your perception of why not enough people shopped at the market to allow it to sustain itself? Just want to hear others’ viewpoints.
Check out the looong earlier comment threads:
http://www.magnoliavoice.com/2010/12/16/breakdown-of-farmers-market-costs/#more-4509
http://www.magnoliavoice.com/2010/11/26/latest-on-efforts-to-save-the-farmers-market/#more-4446
http://www.magnoliavoice.com/2010/11/19/saving-magnolia-farmers-market-meeting-tuesday/#more-4312
http://www.magnoliavoice.com/2010/11/10/magnolia-farmers-market-to-close-unless-community-finds-funding/#more-4278
http://www.magnoliavoice.com/2010/09/20/magnolia-farmers-market-survey/#more-4046
The consensus seems to be that just like any other business – and most of us work for or own businesses – if the farmers’ market cannot create an attractive enough business model to sustain itself, then it SHOULD close and we can all shop the farmers’ markets at Queen Anne (and now Interbay). Commenters also criticize how closed-mouth the NFMA has been about exactly how it’s going to spend this money.
Hmm. The Interbay market will be quite a draw, I think. One stop shopping! Magnolia’s, though it would be great to have it again, would have such a short season that I am not sure it’s a great plan anymore. I mean, that’s just a couple of months. Often there’s great produce in the fall. We’d miss out on that.
I’m excited about the new Interbay market. It’ll attract the Whole Foods crowd as well as drivers on 15th. I suspect it may do as well or better than our walk-to-it Magnolia market. (Note: the successful Ballard & University farmers markets rely a LOT on drive-up traffic from around the city; our Magnolia market has focused on just Magnolia.)
And thus I suspect it’ll be the death knell of the Magnolia market. Having three farmers markets now – Magnolia, Interbay and Queen Anne – in the same small geographic area is like having three bagel shops on the same block. The weakest one will go out of business because there are not enough customers to sustain all three.
If people want to donate to keep the market open here, great! But I can’t afford to support the farmers by shopping at the market. The prices are too high, plain and simple. I do better buying my produce as needed rather than all at once on Saturday, and end up with less total spending and less waste.
I know that farming, particularly organic farming, is a very hard way to make a living, and most are in it for the love of it or belief in it more than the profit. But I wonder if a different pricing model….lower prices to sell more product, would yield more total profits for them? It would certainly bring me back as a customer.
I’m a little confused here. We’re being told that the market will leave unless the customers agree to “donate” $20K to keep it going. Is the market that important to the community? Why is the market different from any other business that needs to run a profitable operation to stay alive. Is this any different from lets say LeReoux making a similar plea to Magnolians? This entire thing is a joke.
What happens if they don’t raise enough money? Will contributors get refunds? Or will the money be used for something else? The total lack of transparency regarding the finances is baffling. Give at your own risk.
I notice the Olympic Sculpture Park Market blog has apparently taken down its post saying it is moving to Interbay. Problem since the announcement?
It was a premature announcement…superceding the formal press release announcement.
Did I say superceding ? Tsk. I meant preceding.. the Interbay Market Project is proceding as planned.
Why can’t the Magnolia Chamber of Commerce or some other business/civic organization get together and host a farmer’s market themselves? It sounds like NFMA wants the people who visit the farmer’s market to pay for the right to have farmers sell their products in our neighborhood…Why do we need to pay, when the farmers are already paying stall fees (to the tune of half a million a year to the NFMA)? Why can’t the farmer’s just pay rent directly to the Chamber of Commerce to host a farmer’s market? Or maybe even invite farmers for free and charge a small fee to non-farmer vendors and artists?
What does the NFMA do that we can’t do in our neighborhood ourselves? In 2008 the NFMA posted a “profit” of almost $90,000, in 2009 it was $52,000. At the end of 2009 they had about $400k in cash in the bank. They receive grants, fundraising money and stall fees, and now they want the neighborhoods who don’t create as much profit for them to shell out money themsleves?
The NFMA was (according to their website) “created to operate farmers markets for the benefit of local farmers and consumers” and their “mission is to support and strengthen Washington?s small farms and farming families”. I applaud the goals of the NFMA and gladly support farmers, food security and eating and buying local, but this seems a bit like blackmail to me purely for financial gain and not to “benefit local farmers and consumers”
This is absolutely scandalous. I know these figures Ryan stated to be true..I’ve the financial statements he’s talking about. The NFMA represents themselves as a poor non-profit who can’t afford the expense. They are misrepresenting themselves at the same time they continue to go to the well of public funding and city grants crying “poor us”, when what they are really doing is creating yet more financial surplus for themselves.
Magnolia’s situation is the result their poor business judgement for the last 6 years, and they want the community to pay up when they have almost a half a million in the bank.. what’s wrong with this picture, people? They need to buck up and fix the problem, or let it go instead of trying to dupe us.
These postings about the Mag Farmers Market are so negative. It takes a village to make things happen however, said village needs to work together. Why wouldn’t the community want to make their downtown village more appealing? What the announcement failed to say was that the farmers market is being moved out of the community center parking lot into the village. This is fabulous for the local retailers and restaurants. Come on people – for the love, please help the retailers down there. They are struggling! Do you want to see a bunch of boarded up storefronts or a thriving little business community?
I am all for having a market in the village, and I think the location on 33rd is a plus this year. My main issue with this is that it doesn’t seem to be the creation of a “vibrant, sustainable market…” as Nancy Gellos states in the article. If every year, the magnolia residents and businesses have to cough up $20,000 to pay the NFMA to host the market, that doesn’t really seem to encourage a vibrant and sustainable model.
My argument is that the community itself (whether through the chamber of commerce or another organization) should take the reins, much like Queen Anne has, to form the market that we want, instead of paying NFMA to make the decisions for us. Much of the criticism I believe is not directed at the idea of having a healthy village and supporting farmers, it is at the way NFMA is going about this and the total lack of transparency regarding why we need to pay them $20,000 to do what they were established as a non-profit (and for which they receive grants and fund-raising money for already) to do: namely “to operate farmers markets for the benefit of local farmers and consumers”.
Just heard the Bellagio board?put the kabosh on 33rd for the market.?
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Grumbles that Seattle still has too many farmers markets
By VANESSA HO, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Updated 09:48?a.m., Monday, May 23, 2011
Berries from Jesse’s Berries in Mount Vernon are for sale during the Olympic Sculpture Park Farmers Market.
Photo: Seattlepi.com, Joshua Trujillo / SL Berries from Jesse’s Berries in Mount Vernon are for sale during…?Comments (18) 72 Share Larger | Smaller Printable Version Email This Georgia (default) Verdana Times New Roman ArialFont
More Information22Page 1 of 1When farmers grumble that Seattle has too many farmers markets, it tends to deflate the city’s eco-foodie image, where the mayor rides a bike and officials encourage backyard chicken?coops.So with a new farmers market season dawning, some wonder if the grumbles have led to any changes. Has the alleged glut corrected?itself?Already, two markets have folded. They include the Olympic Sculpture Park market, promoted last year as fun, scenic grocery shopping for Belltown’s condo dwellers. But farmers found the sloping waterfront park with its zigzag path a logistical nightmare. And the crowds were just ho-hum.”It was like a military exercise for staging people,” said Jon Hegeman, organizer of the Seattle Farmers Market Association, which ran the market?there.The other market on ice is South Lake Union, a market that struggled in a neighborhood also powered by active businesses, but not quite ready for prime-time?produce.Starbucksification of farmers marketsFarmers say this year’s loss of two markets is a mere dent in what some have likened to the?? Starbucksification of farmers markets. Last summer, Seattle peaked with 19. Some ran on the same day; some ran within a few miles of one?another.”They cannibalize each others’ market share,” said Wade Bennett, of Rockridge Orchards in Enumclaw. “In the private sector, the weaker ones would go out of business. But these are subsidized.” He said they’re supported by government and community groups, and?volunteers.The market explosion has prompted some farmers to pull back on where they sell. Bennett and his his wife Judy have dropped out of Phinney and Lake City, their slowest markets last year.?But the limited supply of farmers hasn’t diminished the ravenous demand for markets, often by neighborhoods already near an existing market, and lacking the residents and attractions to support one of its?own.In recent months, more than 12 neighborhoods have called Chris Curtis, of the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance, with interest in starting a market. They include: Wedgwood, Haller Lake, Sunset Hill, Shoreline, Northgate, Beacon Hill, International District, Admiral District, Central District, southern Rainier Avenue, southern Martin Luther King Way, and the University of Washington?campus.Curtis has turned them all down. Her board is not interested in expanding beyond the group’s seven established?markets.”There’s a great deal of interest in buying local food from local farmers, and we have a wonderful network of markets. They say, ‘I want that in my backyard,'” Curtis?said.”But it’s difficult to organize a market and provide staff and insure and permit and promote and be the first one there and last one to?leave.”Seattle does have one new market opening this season – in Interbay. But it’s comprised of vendors who sold at the Scupture Park last year, and like that market, which ran only one season, it too has a pilot-y?feel.Instead of opening in the middle of a strolling-friendly neighborhood, the Interbay market will be in a vast parking lot; off a busy, impersonal street; and outside of Whole?Foods.Organizer Hegeman – who doesn’t think there’s too many markets in Seattle – said the Interbay location has the right ingredients. Its local, just-picked produce will complement Whole Foods’ high-end offerings, he said. And instead of serving pedestrians rolling up in their flip flops, it will cater to commuters heading home in their?cars.The market opens June?9.Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Grumbles-that-Seattle-still-has-too-many-farmers-1388716.php#ixzz1NnrFpVPa