Dear Mayor John Dooley and Nelson City Council,

It’s time for the City of Nelson to step up and fix our hurting farmers market. Attendance is down and vendors aren’t well-served by the current situation, nor is our community, or visitors. While Covid is definitely a factor, so is holding the market in what is essentially a dusty vacant lot with nothing to anchor it. 

It’s been almost six years since the City tore down the old farmer’s market structure without a plan in place to replace it. The idea at the time was that the EcoSociety would figure out a way to raise the money to build a new market structure on the City-owned property at Cottonwood Falls. For various reasons that aren’t relevant to this petition, the City took over the market in June 2020. 

It seems like it was a lot to put all the responsibility of fundraising and construction on the EcoSociety. The farmers market is on City-owned land and is part of our community infrastructure. It should always have been a City project, as was suggested by some members of Council at the time.

Lots of communities – including communities smaller than Nelson – manage to build farmers markets. It shouldn’t need to be this hard. It doesn’t need to cost millions of dollars. It doesn’t need to be a 4-season structure with a full HVAC system for cooling, heating, and air filtration. It doesn’t need to be the architectural marvel of the age. If we’re trying to build something that covers every possible contingency, that’s when we’ll run into wild cost-overruns and endless delays.

So no to all of that.

Here’s what we do need: a simple structure that allows people to gather, whether it’s for farmers markets, festivals, cook-offs, or any other public or private events that might come up over the duration of its lifespan, which could easily be 50 years or more. 

We could probably get away with building a simple structure like the one pictured above. If it needs to be enclosed for security reasons, we could probably do that without spending millions of dollars. All we need is something intentional-looking to provide an anchor, so that it doesn’t feel like we’re holding markets and other events in an abandoned vacant lot. 

So let’s follow the “KISS” principle. (“Keep It Simple, Stupid!”)  Let’s put up a simple building that can be enclosed and serve as a covered space for anywhere from 12-20 vendors. Yes, some vendors will still need to use tents, and that’s fine. Should it have washrooms? Not necessarily in that building. We could just rebuild the existing washroom structure, and add some utility space for the park and pavilion. 

The purpose of this petition isn’t to offer all of the solutions, or to present a final plan for how our community pavillion should be completed. It’s simply to light a fire under all our butts. After almost six years, we want the City to stop dragging its feet and finally come up with a solution that doesn’t try to solve every imaginable problem. 

Nobody asked for a new pier, and nobody asked for a new welcome sign. But we’re getting those anyway, because somebody decided to solve problems we don’t have, and they found the grant money to support those projects. So instead of focusing on projects nobody asked for, please find the money and the will to build something our community actually wants and needs.