Minutes from Farmers’ Market Task Force Meeting
Thursday, September 9, 2004 – 7:30 AM
4th floor City Hall
Those present included Barbara Clark, Sue Hack, Kelvin Heck, Steve Hornberger, Jerry Jost, Maria Martin, Cindy Maude, Emily Miller, David Schauner, and John Pendleton. Those unable to attend were Judy Billings and Aimee Polson. Hillary Brown and Dr. Alan Stevens were guest speakers.
Sue Hack opened the meeting and introductions took place.
Hillary Brown, a local chef and cooking instructor, shared with the task force her ideas for a collaborative restaurant using exclusively local foods. She expressed interest in being close to the market and offering demonstrations with locally grown products, teaching cooking classes, and having a certified kitchen that could be used by market vendors. She also stated a dream of promoting Kansas agriculture through a T.V. show that would offer recipes using local products and would visit farms in the area.
Some discussion of the Strong’s Office Building took place and the possibility of it serving as the location for such a project.
Alan Stevens, Kansas State Research, spoke next. He has been involved with doing season extension using high tunnels. He stated that his office received frequent calls from communities wanting to start farmers’ markets. These communities were interested in quality of life issues for their towns. Dr. Stevens said there are not sufficient vendors to fill the demands. Kansas State Research in response to these requests had started a program called “Growing Growers” where internships are offered established farms to train and promote new growers. His other concern was to be able to offer a year-round market for growers who chose to work with high tunnels and extend their season of production. He explained that high tunnels could be as low or high tech as the user wanted. And that a 10 to 12 month growing season was possible using this technology. He stated he hoped Lawrence could be a pilot point for this season extension possibility.
Dr. Stevens gave some insights to other places in the country that have year-round markets. He said it has been proven that fresh, locally grown produce is the #1 choice of market patrons and that the consumer will pay a small price premium for this commodity.
We next discussed priority needs for the market and determined some additional space was one of our first objectives. Cindy Maude suggested the Tanger Mall site. Barbara Clark and Jerry Jost both stated that surveys done of both market patrons and vendors showed a strong preference for remaining downtown. Others remarked that site would not lend itself to the sense of community and pedestrian walking traffic that the downtown area affords.
Mike Wildgen proposed that something that could be done by the City Commissioners that would not require any capitol would be to close Vermont Street to vehicular traffic on a temporary basis during Saturday market hours. Sue Hack asked if this would be considered on a trial basis. Barbara Clark stated that she thought it would be a good trial, but that she would not want this to put a stop to the momentum of the task force’s pursuit of a permanent solution to the market’s needs.
Alan Stevens stated that a circular of square pattern for a market is best. This is preferred over a linear pattern.
We turned our discussion to the next meeting on Thursday, September 23rd. Jerry Jost offered to contact Maureen Rogers and Quinn Bennion from Merriam, KS and also talk with Roger Peterson from Overland Park concerning speaking before the task force concerning the process their cities went through to improve their markets.
Sue Hack adjourned the meeting.
Respectfully submitted,
Barbara Clark