A Permanent Farmer's Market?

I stumbled upon Gillian Glover's blog, This City Life, the other day and really enjoyed it. As a former Vancouver City Planning Commissioner, she writes about urban planning, and how urbanites interact with their city. In one of her posts I found this photograph. Can you believe this beautiful building used to be Vancouver's first Farmer's Market? Yup. This very cool building was situated in False Creek at the bottom of Main Street and opened it's doors for the very first time on August 15th, 1908. This spectacular building had 2 bell towers, a wooden promenade and a restaurant serviced by the Fraser Valley farmers who brought their goods by train. (Train! Where, oh, where have all the trains gone?) Clearly, permanent farmer's markets are not a new thing, many Canadian cities have them and now it might just be our turn again!  The Vancouver Farmer's Market Society is currently working on a business plan for establishing a permanent farmer's market.


What great news! It's not that I don't like the outdoor markets which have become a huge success since the first market opened at Trout Lake Park in 1995, but it's exactly that, they are very popular and now it's practically impossible to accommodate the vendors, the public, the dogs, the wagons, the strollers and the musicians. Did the original group of 7 market enthusiasts ever think that their $9000 start-up fund and their relentless lobbying with the city would come to this? A permanent market?

Gillian asks, of course, exactly was I was thinking: What's the difference between a permanent farmer's market and the market on Granville Island? She states:

"According to the Business Plan Lead, Darren Stott, “The intention is to only have or mostly have direct sales at the New City Market, very unlike Granville Island. This means only people who grew it, baked it or made it can sell it at our market. Also, the model we are proposing for the market is to have additional profitable generating functions that offset the extra costs of operating out of a building, such as office leasing, event space leasing, restaurant space leasing and meeting room rentals. We believe with the right location, these can not only generate revenue to keep stall rental fees down for example, but also compliment the food hub.”

No location has been determined, although there is hope it will be close to the original 1908 farmer's market. Construction is planned for 2013!