Lansdowne Park Redevelopment Phase 1 | Completed

[JFFournier]

Imagine that.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/ottawa...armers+started+market/8755553/story.html

OTTAWA — The Ottawa Farmers’ Market has grown in leaps and bounds since it was exiled to a park across from Carleton University to make way for the redevelopment at Lansdowne, so much so that its operators are a little anxious about returning.

“Brewer Park’s been incredible for us,” said Robin Turner, the market’s president. “We moved from a giant parking lot beside an awesome heritage building to a beautiful park with all sorts of infrastructure for families and kids. … I think the new location at the Aberdeen Pavilion will be great as well, but when we move back there, we have to make sure that people are getting the same value out of the trip.”

The market opened on asphalt at Lansdowne in 2006, but has now spent 1½ years in temporary quarters at Brewer Park in Old Ottawa South. With playing fields, a big splash pad and playgrounds, Brewer Park has been a much better draw for families, Turner said, who can make a day of it in a way they couldn’t at Lansdowne. The parents shop, the kids run around, they have a picnic, parents run into friends and admire each other’s purchases and go back to pick another thing or two from the market’s vendors.

The renovated Lansdowne Park is to have a heritage orchard, a splash pad of its own and plenty of room to roam by summer 2015, but until it’s done and the farmers have moved into their new, purpose-built outdoor space, they won’t know for sure that it works as well as Brewer Park does, Turner said.

“In moving back there, we’re going to have to make sure that it recognizes all the things that make a farmers’ market great,” he said. The market organization has had good discussions with the city and with landscape architects Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg, the Vancouver firm that’s designing the public spaces at Lansdowne, he said; Turner’s optimistic it will be OK, but they won’t know it is until everything is done.

Another major worry is parking, which is free at Brewer Park under a deal with Carleton and which was free on the acres of pavement at the old Lansdowne.

“In that case, it was the city that was in charge of the parking. Now it’s going to be the developers,” Turner said, with an 1,100-space underground lot controlled by the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, the city’s partners in the renovation of the fairground. The market organization hasn’t yet talked with OSEG about the possibilities, but Turner said he’s anxious that market shoppers not have to pay $12 or something just to stow their cars.

“There’s a lot of people, there’s a lot of really dedicated, devoted customers who come to the market. And they’re people with taste and I think they’re people who’d be good to have in any shopping development,” Turner said. “If they have no interest in that, then it could be really challenging.”

OSEG does have an interest in that, said its chief executive Bernie Ashe through a spokesman. With the property still a construction site for many months to come, OSEG doesn’t have a parking-validation system set up but he is very open to working one out once the memorandum of understanding between the farmers’ market and the city turns into a real contract.

Formal negotiations between the market and the city are to resume in November, once the market season is over, Turner said, and he expects details like the rent the market will pay will be worked out. “For us, everything is pretty groovy. It’s all coming around quite well.”

He’s even hopeful that the city will let the market use the historic Aberdeen Pavilion for markets on Sundays all through the winter. Turner owns Roots and Shoots Farm, a small organic operation near Greely, and recently installed greenhouses not for the usual purpose of forcing hothouse crops like tomatoes to grow earlier in the year, but to grow greens like kale and spinach all through the winter.

As it is, winter keeps customers from making it a permanent habit to buy directly from local farmers, Turner said. “It really creates a disconnect and it makes our shoppers feel like it’s great to shop local but it’s not where you get your real food.” Winter sales of local produce could change that.

In the long run, the market’s success at a renovated Lansdowne will depend on the city’s making a determined effort to preserve it, Turner said: just like produce vendors in the ByWard Market, his members can’t pay the rent of a permanent retail store selling electronics or high-end fashions.

“It has to be recognized that we are sharing space with some very, very high-value commercial real estate. In that case, you have to be super-intentional about creating something that values the citizenry and values the public space and values the visitor, whether or not you have the money to go into the jewelry store down the street,” he said.