The future of the Ottawa Farmer’s Market has been in constant flux since it opened three years ago. And just when it seemed the farmers might finally secure a permanent home at Lansdowne Park, the market could soon face its biggest challenge yet: developing the market while maintaining the grassroots elements that made it a success.
In July 2006, the outdoor market in Lansdowne Park began as a two-year pilot project with only a dozen vendors in a space paid for by the city.
By 2007, the market was attracting up to 6,000 shoppers on its busiest days. The city then granted the market another year in its current location, while mulling over how to move ahead with Lansdowne redevelopment plans.
When Ottawa 67’s owner Jeff Hunt and two other Ottawa businessmen unveiled their much-publicized Lansdowne Live redevelopment proposal this October, it included the promise for a permanent market.
Market-lovers rejoiced, even though the promise was no surprise.
At its peak this summer, the market hosted up to 130 vendors. Removing a successful market that brings thousands of customers to Lansdowne would be a poor business decision for any private developer. Hunt and his co-partners, Minto property developer Roger Greenberg and Trinity Developments president John Ruddy, are not in the habit of making poor business decisions.
But, the format of any new market must be carefully considered.
Turning the two-day-a-week outdoor market into a daily indoor market – as has been proposed – threatens to remove the very thing that keeps people coming back to the farmer’s market: the farmers.
If the market becomes a daily operation, farmers will no longer have time to farm. A daily presence at the market would mean farmers would have to hire someone else to farm. Or they would be forced to hire someone else to sell their products at market.
But the charm of the Ottawa farmer’s market is that the person bagging a rutabaga is likely the same person who dug that rutabaga out of the rich Ottawa Valley soil the day before.
The man selling a glass jar of amber honey would be more than happy to talk about how his hives weathered the winter. The rancher pulling a paper-wrapped package of beef out of a freezer knows how it lived when it was a happy, mooing cow.
Depending on what type of plan is adopted for the new market, urbanites stand to lose that important element of shopper-farmer interaction.
This connection between producer and consumer allows conscious consumers to know they are supporting local farmers and not some factory farm on another continent.
It has also become trendy and this trendiness factor is good for business, allowing the market to expand from a grassroots movement of a dozen vendors to a bustling twice-a-week operation in just three years.
The trend to local food is reflected in weekly newspaper columns about what produce is in season. It’s visible in a host of best-selling books where authors ask North Americans to question the origins of their cheeseburger, or to survive off locally-grown and raised food for an entire year.
Celebrity chefs have also picked up on the trend. With British chef Jamie Oliver bouncing around a Food Network television screen, suddenly growing and eating local veggies has become cool.
The design for Lansdowne is still in its early days. It isn’t even clear if the city will accept the proposal. But two things need to happen in any redevelopment plan if the Ottawa Farmer’s Market wants to retain the original grassroots charm that made it successful.
First, the Ottawa Farmer’s Market needs to be included in any future planning for Lansdowne.
Second, farmer’s market organizers and redevelopers need to realize that bigger markets with more days are not necessarily better, especially if it means taking the farmers out of the farmer’s market.