The Edmonton Downtown Farmers’ Market is looking for a new home after it announced Monday that it can no longer afford the operating costs of hosting the weekly market in the historic Army & Navy building.
With a newly elected board, the market held its AGM on Monday night. After months of discussing the current location, new and old board members decided that it was time to move.
Gilles Lanctot, a.k.a. Big G, has been a vendor at the market for 12 years, and said the news of needing to change locations was surprising but not entirely unexpected.
He said the highlight of the market’s vibrancy was when it was on 104 Street in pre-pandemic times. But, as supportive as the city was for the market, it also committed to LRT lines and infrastructure construction that made it next to impossible to continue to operate the market at that location.
The market will continue operating out of the building at 97 Street and 103 Avenue until its lease is up in April 2024.
“My hope and desire is that we can keep this tradition going,” said Corinne Olsen, the market’s executive director. “It’s to bring the vibrancy of the downtown back to life.
“We’re trying to bring that back — as a farmers’ market, as an event — to support these local vendors and this community. The downtown area needs something as a market to keep it vibrant.”
Olsen said the board is going to “exhaust all possibilities” when it comes to searching for a new space that will be best for the vendors and the community.
The market was hit hard by the pandemic, and as more businesses have closed in the downtown area and kept employees remote, market attendance hasn’t yet recovered, she said.
The pandemic hit about five months after moving to the Army & Navy building and it’s been an “uphill climb” since then, Big G said.
“The market has always been able to shift. We’ve been around for 100 years in some capacity, and as far as being flexible, that’s what a market vendor is supposed to be,” he said. “Hopefully we are going to find something that will get us back to where we were.
“The great thing about the downtown market is the culture we have. The one thing that you’ll see is that all the vendors tend to get along, our customers are amazing — they’re the ones that have kept us going these past five years.”
Space and accessibility are going to be key requirements of the new market location, Olsen said — space in which both vendors and customers feel comfortable. Maintaining the history and culture of the market is also essential, she added.
“We have a history with our market, being around for 120 years, so we’re going to try to capture that and keep growing from there,” she said.
Olsen compared the market to a small town in which everyone comes together to help each other out and support one another to become stronger.
“We’re not going nowhere. We may move a block or two but we’re not going anywhere, we’re here for the long term.”
— with files from Sarah Reid, Global News