By Alessia Proietti

Change of hours: Thursday 3-7 p.m.

Should the Lacombe Farmers’ Market move downtown?

Jan 30, 2022 | 9:00 AM

The Lacombe Farmers’ Market is thinking of moving to the streets of downtown this summer.

President of the market Ryan Klassen and Manager Chris Kutryk presented their ideas to Lacombe city council this Monday.

“The mandate I was given as market manager is: make the Lacombe Farmers’ Market the best market in Alberta,” said Kutryk.

The market is currently held at Michener Park, south-east of the downtown core, open weekly on Fridays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The proposed new location would be on 51 Ave. for a two to three block range until roughly 51 Street. The proposed new hours would be on Thursdays from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. An email flyer contest is also planned giving away $200 per week to customers to be spent at the market.

“The biggest issue residents of Lacombe have is: not being able to come to the market,” said Kutryk, explaining how the majority of the public is either at work or in school during the current hours.

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Market representatives also revealed that some local vendors were making more money at the farmers’ market in Camrose than they were in Lacombe partly because of the restricted hours.

“There’s not a lot more people that we can reach, adverting wise that can make it to the market unless we open up the demographic that we’re trying to hit, which means everyone that has disposable income. The households that have both partners, whoever is in the house, working,” said Klassen.

Still, the Lacombe Farmers’ Market is thought to be the only one to grow in the province last year. Spending $22,000 in advertising in 2021, the market brought in 3,000 visitors. At times, the market had 96 vendors a week utilizing 115 stalls with no choice but to refuse vendors for a lack of space.

While council was on board for the time change, concerns stemmed over the downtown location. Mayor Grant Creasey thought the idea would not be successful, pointing to potential negative effects such as added workload to city employees to close streets.

“I think that there’s going to be some very unhappy business owners here because of the traffic disruptions, which is going to be significant,” he said.

Councillor Thalia Hibbs suggested moving back to the market’s previous 2018 location instead; the parking lot of the Gary Moe Auto Group Sportsplex. Market representatives responded that the arena’s parking lot was not aesthetically pleasing and beginning to be too small for the amount of vendors currently signing up.

“I’d like to be able to make it like a destination. People want to go there,” said Klassen. “You see pictures of markets in other places that have them intermixed once a week with the businesses, and does it look good.”

Councillor Chris Ross raised concerns over parking issues, however, while Councillor Scott Dallas retorted that most citizens visiting farmers’ markets are willing to park a few blocks away for the walk.

Councillor Hibbs later suggested having the market on two intersecting streets rather than two adjacent blocks to create a more condensed space.

“We want to work with the City to make this the best it can be,” said Klassen. “We want to not just benefit ourselves; we want to benefit the city too.”

Council agreed to consider the presentation for future discussion in council meetings.

What do you think of the idea?