How to Change: Don't Put up Roadblocks

Institutional memory is a precious resource but it can sure get ponderous. Sitting in the same spot at Eight and Oak for 43 years has created some powerful stories.

And when I say Eighth and Oak, I am guessing you think: Saturday Market. You think that, for one reason, because in the last 40-odd years Saturday Market has spent just about a million dollars advertising that one essential phrase: 8th and Oak. It's our home, and notwithstanding that it is a city/county park used by thousands of other members of the public, it is still unalterably a home to me, and Saturday Market history there is my history. And there are dozens and hundreds of members and former members who feel that way. We go there every week and do what we do. Thousands of times, each one different.

I asked some tourists this week about their experience, since I had overheard them saying: "There it is, just like on the website." They had seen one of my fresh new hats, *Grateful Dad* pictured in the new products which Kim, our Promotions manager, documents so frequently. They said they didn't know their way around Eugene at all, but just went for Eighth. Eighth, Eighth, Eighth.

This Great Street, historically the Main Street which got the pioneers from Skinner's Mudhole to their farms and communities up the river road, was a conduit long before Sixth and Seventh became the feeder streets. Long before Eleventh was paved, long before any thoughts of bus-rapid-transit, back when people walked everywhere unless they had a horse. Farmers and craftspeople gathered there from the beginning to trade and support each other.

It is the artery of our Market, and as it runs between our two Markets, Saturday Market and Lane County Farmers Market, it connects us and feeds us and makes us inseparable.We have more than just synergy. Our institutional memory reaches back to when we were ten and created the LCFM by inviting farmers into our membership. Lotte told us all of the world markets she had observed had produce and other food within them, and we needed it too. Throughout the next thirty years we sold together with farmers in various arrangements, and it was always together that we all did our best.

We can't really cut to now and just start fresh with new solutions to what some LCFM members and some members of the community think are the essential problems with the space. We would not be wise to jettison our collective memory and follow the imaginations of new people who don't seem to see us as we see ourselves. We couldn't do it even if we tried.

The Saturday Market is not just an organization, but it is a membership, and every member is an independent, autonomous business. Each one thinks for herself, gathers facts, forms opinions, and makes her (or his) experience, different every week, responding to the conditions of the moment, but within the conditions of our collective experience that we have learned are what sustains us. This Saturday every time I walked anywhere in the Market I heard people talking about the street closure plan. We like having farmers, but this week we were having a hard time shopping over there.

We like having tourists, parking, garbage collection, hand-washing stations, staff, security, etc. We have chosen to spend a million dollars in advertising and promotion, dollar by dollar. And every single dollar we spend comes from the pockets of our members. All of our money comes from us, through the generosity and interest of our beloved customers, for whom we try our best to create a safe, fun experience.

We create it, with the kind assistance of our neighbors and friends and all of the people who visit our town and want what we want. The love shown for our two organizations is prodigious. People are as dedicated to us as we are to them.

And nobody wants to see us struggle. While members of the community have varied opinions on what will or won't work or should or shouldn't happen, our institutional memory knows that it is possible to break what we have. It is possible to ruin it. As strong and mighty as it looks, you can love it to death.

I'm happy that new farmers are wanting to join what is the premier community gathering in the state, perhaps, maybe in the PNW. Maybe we are the center of the universe as we often say metaphorically. The future of our food is beyond essential, and it seems so vital that young farmers have a way to enter the marketplace, some room, some support. No one is against this. But I am going to draw a very clear line on how growth has to happen at Eighth and Oak.

Eighth has to be open. It is our artery. The closure of Eighth Street for a few farmers' booths is not a step forward to greater prosperity. It will break our Market. No rosy vision of expansion that chokes off our lifeblood will be sustainable or positive for either organization.

It might look good for the farmers. An Eighth Avenue closure plan brings nothing for the Saturday Market members. It will break us.

It may be rude and it is not our style to point this out, but we have a huge imbalance on the Park Blocks, and that is that Saturday Market has grown organizationally to respond to the changed conditions of our marketplace. We have pooled our money through our percentage fee (we pay $10 plus 10% daily for our spaces, plus other fees) and we have rented lots of bathrooms (at an annual cost of $12,000). We have hired security teams for the hours we are there. We have hired people to put up fences, tables, rain protection and shade, to empty our trash cans, to clean up messes, to process people's credit cards and hand out change, to give little kids bandaids and to spread the word of our offerings. We have spent a literal fortune to build our enterprises together and to make them strong, and above all, safe, and we always work until we find something that works for as many of us as possible.

We have subsidized the LCFM with our money, our time, our thoughts, and our hearts for the whole of its existence. We have nurtured it and we continue to pay way more than our fair share for what happens around us on Saturdays. Thousands of my dollars have gone to clean up after the spontaneity of what happens on the Courthouse Plaza. Our staff cleans it every week. We don't rent it, we aren't responsible for it, we don't have any control over it, we just keep it clean. We do that because it is the right thing to do. Thousands of my dollars have gone to sort the trash of farmers' customers, to answer the bazillion questions about the farmers that run through the SM information booth, to do the right thing as well as we know how to do for our beloved neighborhood. We give and we give.

I would not take back a single dollar. I do not like to see the farmers struggle. I would love to see them have the amount of space they need to prosper. However, the space is finite, and we are already using all of it. The uses being made of Eighth Street are the historical, practical, essential uses. It is the only legal and safe bike egress to the west, particularly when Broadway gets blocked off as it was this weekend. It is the way people find the Market, get through it to park, and see what it is. One one side we have the Saturday Market, and on the other side we have the Farmers Market. This is not by accident, and it is not a casual arrangement. Oak Street lacks the intimacy and presence of Eighth. Eighth is not just a through street, it's much more.

We only moved to the Park Blocks in 1982, but we know what it was like when we didn't have the easy entry of Eighth Street. When we were cloistered up on the Butterfly, people were afraid to enter. It took a commitment. Easy entry works for us. Barriers to entry do not.

Closing the Street means narrowing access, and diverting traffic to other locations. Tourists will drive off to Fifth Street, to Down to Earth, to Oakway, and to South Eugene. Locals will find other ways to meet their Saturday needs, deciding not to fight the bolloxed traffic patterns, to take an easier path. It will break us.

And like the other things that we hold in our long memory that have not worked for us, this one will be the worst. This will be looked upon in retrospect just like what happened to downtown through urban renewal, the growth of VRC, and the Downtown Mall. The collective wisdom of the mature institution that is the Saturday Market tells us that this is not the time to accommodate, to experiment, to try out closure and see how it works.

Logistical problems may be solvable, traffic may be controllable, feelings may be consolable. It might look like it works okay for a weekend or part of a season. I'm not sure if you will be able to tell if it is working or not. I'm not sure if the anticipated drop in my  sales and our organization's income, (and the rise in our expenses, which has already taken place as we spend needed resources in meetings and staff time) will be traceable to this alteration in our circulatory system. Nobody really knows.

But we know what feeds us. We know ourselves, and we know the farmers. We know the history of the last ten years of LCFM struggle. We are not new to the situation. We aren't going to put the history aside and doom ourselves to a huge, uninformed mistake by a few people with energy.

Saturday Market is drawing the line. We oppose street closure. LCFM can not own Eighth Street. It is far too valuable.

And through our commitment to doing the right thing, we will continue to work to solve our neighborhood problems. We welcome group process. We have skills to apply to it. We care deeply about our relationships and long, deep cooperative collaborations with the farmers. We think it will break them too, this vision that is not grounded in what is already happening down there.

We are not willing to stand aside and watch this happen. We have offered at least six alternatives to street closure. There are ideas we haven't even yet explored. We have good ideas, a dime a dozen. Just ask.

Don't ask, at your peril. We have six hundred members with opinions. Some of them are grounded in the long history, and it won't be pretty when they surface. Do the work, Eugene City Government, Lane County Government, Lane County Farmers Market, and all who are trying to support small business, economic prosperity, and sustainable business in Oregon. Find the solution that will actually work to improve things.

Don't break us. We are a treasure. Listen to us and respect us. There is no other Saturday Market. Don't love progress more than you love what we have made, what we are making. Do not try to brush us aside.
We are the experts on downtown retail on Saturdays. We sing it every week: Prosperity and fun for everyone.

Can we just get back to that, please? This is the busy season! I have so much to do, to get ready for OCF, for my only son's wedding, my family reunion, my continuing recovery from my broken foot, researching and writing my book, doing the myriad unpaid and paid things I do all the time. The garden needs weeding! I do not have time to go over this repeatedly as we have for the last several years. Do not close the street. Do not close the street. Just don't do it.