Our Extra Hour

Nice to get up and turn the clock back...even though it means our last market on the Park Blocks will be dark at the end when we give our final howl of the season (for those of you who aren't there, we always end the last Market with a primal howl to the Crafters' Moon as we leave downtown for a winter indoors. It's a fun balance to the little song in the morning...)

I feel called to respond to Bob Warren's Weekly viewpoint about the Market's relationship with the City and the Farmers. First, I thank him for caring about us, and for saying that in public, which we as members rarely do. Those of us who try to speak for the group know we can never fully express the thoughts of 600 diverse members, our staff, our Board and all our community supporters. Hardly anything is fully in agreement with this group, except that we love the Market and want it to thrive.

His main point, which was a little hard to pick out, was that the PPS consulants from NY, who were hired to advise the City on downtown solutions, proposed closing the Market for a season and a half and tearing the Park Blocks down to the ground and starting over. It was a terrible shock to us who had been working with the consultants and immediately destroyed the trust that we, as primary stakeholders, would be heard. The City has never directly said that they won't follow that advice.

If you aren't aware, I am the head of the Downtown Developments Task Force for Saturday Market, and as such I have been meticulously tracking our relationships in downtown for the past four years, with plenty of attention given to it before that. You can check back in the archive of this blog for many posts I've written about the subject. I listen to as many of the City Council meetings and workshops as I can, and have been included in lots of meetings with City  and County Staff and others working on these issues. I have a collection of paper a foot high and I have studied both that PPS report and the Park Blocks Master Plan in detail. The city has never directly told us they won't close or move us, though we have directly asked for that assurance.

And it isn't like I started five years ago. In the past I took minutes for the Farmers, and I've had relationships with them for over thirty years. I was there when they separated from Saturday Market about ten years in, and watched as they tried to make it in various locations until they secured the north block across the street from us. I've sold at lots of Tuesday Market configurations, and know for certain that the only way we crafters succeed at TM is when we are right there within the produce booths. Proximity is everything for the markets. The synergy and symbiosis is extremely complex, has a long history, and I would dispute the dog/tail analogy. Sometimes it's one way, sometimes the other. It's not simple, and involves a lot of individuals who don't agree.

One thing that's true is that we at SM are wary of following the farmers down the path they've chosen. We are heading in a different direction, or more correctly, they've struck out on a new road and we are staying on the one we're on. When the Urban Renewal Funds were allocated, the City did pitch a large sum, $11.2 million, to the Park Blocks Remodel, (Edit, I had this way off. $5.2 million was for parks spaces, which included Kesey, Hult Cts and Library Plaza at the time, and $4.7 for farmers was correct, plus their leftover $500,000 which still hadn't been spent) to match the $5.2 million for the Year-Round Indoor Farmers' Market. The money has been sitting there, some of it used in the Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper efforts to activate the Park Blocks and downtown. I would say that almost none of it has yet been used to directly benefit Saturday Market as the renter of the southern blocks, but things have been proposed. Some of it has benefitted us, indirectly, like dislodging the camping that was making the PB unsafe for us, and a general improvement of the downtown, but most of the energy has been spent on the weekdays, because Saturday didn't need fixing. We've told them that. Everybody but the PPS consultants knew what we meant.

We've been sitting in this position for years, of figuring out how to say no without saying no. The first thing was the Feasibility Study for the YRIM, which was initially proposed as a Public Market kind of development which the farmers and the crafters would share, co-managing it, finding ways to make it work together. We participated in the study survey, which showed that it was feasible, but when we realized it would obliterate the Market we built, we said a definite flat NO to further participation in the project. We coulda had a building. We decided we don't want a building. We most definitely do not want to sell indoors. "Public Market" has a history for us.

Our magic is in our once-a-week, outdoors in easily accessible, beautiful public space, with low-cost participation costs, member control, independent funding, and all of the very same tenets set in place by our founders almost fifty years ago. That's who we are, that's who we want to be, and we know we are the experts in how to do this. You can see our success every Saturday. We don't really want what the city has offered.

Goddess knows we don't want a fully remodeled space. Our deep culture is site-based. I've written about our neighborhood relationships and all the ways we've adapted to our space in the 35 years we've been in the southern two blocks. We could not move, even temporarily, to some parking lot with no shade and no services to accomodate construction, without it destroying what we've grown. Our stance is that we can't move, and we can't close, but there are lots of weekdays and a whole period of 41/2 months when we are not renting the Park Blocks. If the City wants to improve the concrete, fix the walls, remove one or two trees (no more!) or propose a way to add a restroom or a new stage within those limitations, we might enjoy that. We might support some things like that. But not all of us. If you take out the fountain and eliminate my space, well, I will have to re-assess my whole operation down there. If you put a bathroom where I have sold for so many years, change where the food booths set up, move the stage to the other block, or ask us to move to City Hall block for a year, we think Saturday Market might fail to thrive. We think we would lose members, find that a lot of people would take a leave of absence at minimum, and our budget would be broken and we'd suffer. So our position is no closing, no moving, and no going indoors year round. We want what we have built. But we are the tenants, not the owners. Yet we are a big part of the owners, which are actually the public, right?

The City has patiently explained that a community solution has to be found for the Park Blocks, and we don't own that, as renters one day a week (for 35 years, though.) Yes, of course, we activate the park and downtown like nobody's business, and the City staff who has tried to emulate us during the week for several years knows just how hard it is to do that successfully. We have the keys to that and they've learned from us. They even subsidize other craft organizations to have booths at their events now. Crafters bring life and quirk and people love them. Farmers do too, and there's a  lot of mutual admiration in that synergy, until it gets framed as competition. We don't compete with the farmers.

So the building and our relationship with the farmers. Sigh. I was fired from taking minutes for them, as it became clear that we (SM) were not going to agree with some things going forward, and I was perceived as an outsider. They did a lot of things that made them different from the LCFM we knew. They began appointing community members as Board members, ended informative communications and a high level of member involvement, for a different business model that they felt served their purposes better. They ended the longstanding "gentlemen's agreement" that we had held with them, that we would not sell produce and they would not have food booths. They added a beer garden, and began adding businesses that were more commercial than we allowed in our Market. Maker is the Seller went by the wayside for them, as they allowed direct agents and employees more than we did. All of the changes were things they wanted for their organization and we couldn't really even object that much. They are a different kind of market with different needs, and that just became more so as we diverged. We had to actually oppose them in some siting proposals, such as closing 8th and Oak so they could use 8th as selling space. We had to show them that would probably not work out to their beneift either.

That was all okay; we had some hard feelings but we mainly operated much the same as usual. Our friends were still our friends, and we tried to keep our disputes mostly out of the public eye. Lots of people still think all the activities on the Park Blocks are "Saturday Market." Then came the UR funds.

The Farmers' management and Board bought into the building idea. They want the YRIM. We said our hard NO but we said it softly, and we chose to not oppose the farmers in meeting their own needs in the way they want to meet them. We've been watching and listening, and though we have our fears about changing the Park Blocks operations, we aren't opposing the building. Some of our members have all along had no objections to it, and nobody knows how it will play out. It could be good for both markets, and it could kill both markets. It is speculation at its most concrete level.

Remodeling the Park Blocks into the Town Square is a huge project with lots of details, and there is where we sit, contemplating the details and wondering about how to proceed. Confidence isn't high. We could use some reassurance. Maybe Bob can get us some.

We do have a 5-year contract on the southern blocks, but things can be done to it within that. We proposed that some on-site storage might be nice, since our staff hauls tons of equipment two  blocks every week, and it's hard. So the City staff thought putting four pods, two for them and two for us, might be good, and they plopped one down, after we took a hard look at the site and tried to find space. Once we saw the first one, we said no to any more. They are huge and ugly, even with a dino wrap. We've adapted to those (two now) and the unusable, low-capacity locked restroom trailer. We've lost two prime loading spaces to those, and a few to the crosswalk, but the crosswalk was necessary and important for safety and kind of works okay. We like the pink flower boxes. The effort was made to make them fun and funky with polkadots and we liked that. We even asked for a similar treatment to the place we put our info booth. Some people even liked the EPD camera in the fire lane for two Saturdays, though I was not one of them. Yes, people who were watching the tapes, I was that old lady who kept looking at the camera with my arms folded. I felt safer without it. But nobody asked me.

We didn't really have a chance to oppose the deck on the west block, and the feedback we gave about design wasn't taken, and frankly, it's kind of a folly. Little used, it is impacted by our porta-potties. We asked to move those across the street so the deck would be better, but couldn't get that. The deck didn't take space we were using, but it impacted quite a few members and mostly we've settled into being okay with the deck and occasionally it works. We will certainly always need more customer seating.

This is getting too long so I'll try to wrap up. Thanks, Bob, for speaking in public, even with the small errors like getting Opening Day wrong (It's ALWAYS the first Saturday in April.) and I hope no one thought we don't get along with the farmers or want a bulding of our own. We want what we have built. We love the way it works now, and we don't want to change anything major. We've tried to be clear, and we actually have developed pretty good relationships with City staff over the past couple of years. We think they've heard us, and we think when the plans start being made, we might be okay with them. But, there's a giant, overwhleming BUT.

The City isn't telling us what they're planning, in specifics. The farmers aren't telling us specifics either. Better communication would be great. If there are drawings, we should have them in my foot-tall pile. What I do have is not acceptable. I have resisted going to the City Council and dumping my pile of research on the table and telling them I need better answers. I don't think they have them.

I have avoided going to the public for support, because I know it is there, and I believe that community solutions will honor our needs and we'll be able to negotiate the ways we will say no without saying no. I believe in our creative intelligence in finding true inclusive solutions and there are certainly some we need, like that fourth block issue, Free Speech Plaza, the outlaw space I support with the fees I pay for services and promotion of my Market. I am always hopeful that we are strong enough to be clear and give credence and evidence to our positions so that all will see that solutions can be found that are elegant, supportive, and successful.

Hope is a thing in short supply, and I appreciate the distraction from the national crisis to get back into our local reality. City Staff will present on Town Square plans at a worksession at 5:30 pm on November 13th (Tuesday because of Veteran's Day.) I will be at that worksession, taking notes.

I will speak at the following Public Forum if I need to, but it has never been my first choice to make this about me and what I think is right. Our decisions at Market are made by seeking consensus. That's just how we operate, and the current language of participatory decision-making and community conversations and so on isn't really as far from consensus process as you might think. The test will come when the City staff decides what they will move forward with when they hear everything the stakeholders have to say. Councilors have said the Park Blocks are forgotten space, are shabby, are unused, and many other things that make me think they have never been to the Market. I know they do sometimes come...I saw one there yesterday sitting on the lawn for a long time.

I thought about making her work by discussing Bob's column, but I decided to just keep doing my Saturday job, making money to pay my bills. Property taxes are due and I don't have the money just yet, though yesterday will help. Still, I spent $15 on grapes. I love the farmers. I'll send her my link.

We'll get through whatever comes. As archivist for the Market, I've read about lots of times when things looked dire, and here we still are to tell the story. We're not going anywhere.

If you would like to join my task force, you can email me at dmcwho@efn.org and I'll send you updates and links to articles and meetings. Not everyone wants to know every little thing about the Park Blocks, but if you do, there's a way to keep track. I can't channel the words of the goddess, but I can let you know what I know, and occasionally what I think. It's essential to me, and why I volunteer to listen to all those lengthy meetings and read all those detailed documents. I care. I know you do, too, and that was Bob's message. People care.

See you next week for our last howl in the gathering dark. Then the shiny Holiday Market! Let's hope for the best on Nov. 13th, after we survive this next Tuesday. You know what to do about that.