Sierra Madre Farmers Market to Close. Maybe for Good?

After roughly two years, the weekly Sierra Madre Farmers Market has shut down temporarily. The market's last day in its current incarnation was Sept. 27.

Its management company, Scholastic Gardens, informed the city in July that it would be exiting the business, citing poor economic performance. Located just south of Sierra Madre Boulevard, in the public parking lot along Mariposa Avenue, the market was hidden from most of the city's foot and street traffic.

With insurance coverage good through September, according to Sierra Madre Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Bill Coburn, Scholastic Gardens and the city agreed upon an extension through the end of the summer, giving the city a chance to find a new management company. The city issued a Request for Proposals that expired on Aug. 28.

At the same time, Scholastic Gardens brought in Oscar Rodriguez, a coffee importer and vendor as well as the manager of several other local farmers markets, to oversee the market. "It seemed like he had some good ideas," said Tanja Castle, speaking on behalf of Scholastic Gardens. "We were trying to trying to turn it over in a better condition to another sponsor."

Rodriguez intended to submit his own proposal, according to Coburn, but ultimately did not.

The city received only one proposal, on the condition that the market must be moved to another location—Hermosa Avenue, between Memorial Park and the Congregational Church. The proposal, however, did not include costs or logistics for such a move, providing the city with "no way of knowing what would be involved," Coburn said. With the city unable to agree to this condition, the proposal was considered null, meaning that the bidding period had effectively ended without any legitimately considerable bids being submitted.

According to the city, the one proposal came from an organization called California Farmers Market Productions. The city was unable to provide contact information for the company, citing the fact that the company had physically withdrawn its proposal after it had been rejected. City officials said they were unsure if the company would resubmit another proposal.

"One of the things that we're really concerned about is how much is it going to cost to put it somewhere that is visible and is going to help it develop into what it needs to develop into," said Weaver. After a thorough study of these additional costs, Weaver said the department would be taking a new plan back to the Community Services Commission, "most likely in December."

Without a management company, the city's Community and Personel Services Commission, which oversees the market, had little choice but to put it on hold indefinitely. According to a recent Chamber of Commerce newsletter, the Commission voted on Sept. 20 to have city staff investigate what would be necessary to move the market to a more visible location and to issue a new Request for Proposals from other management companies interested in taking over, beginning in the spring. 

"It's not even guaranteed that a new RFP will go out at this time," said Elisa Weaver, director of Sierra Madre's Community and Personnel Services Department. "What we're doing is researching alternate locations within the city and what the pros and cons are for those locations.

"What we were told by the Community Services Commission is that they did not want the Farmers Market to have to be subsidized by the city," said Weaver. While Weaver said that the costs associated with the current setup are nominal, moving to another location would drive costs through the roof. "Police officers alone would cost around $100 per hour, and you have to acount for setup and briefing time with that, too. What we need to find is a management company who can handle those costs if necessary, while still making enough money to make it worth their while. I think we're going to be hard pressed to find a farmers market organization that could come in and pay $1,000-plus every week," said Weaver.

Despite running most Wednesdays from 3 to 7 p.m. since 2008, the market was not on the radar of many Sierra Madre residents. On one gloomy Wednesday in early September, before the hiatus announcement, the market, though not empty, was not exactly bustling. Several vendors commented that business had been slow and suspected changes were afoot.

Still, most of the vendors—including Rodriguez—expressed measured satisfaction with the current location, expressing frustration primarily with a lack of publicity for the market. "This is a good location," said one produce vendor, "but there's no publicity."

Rodriguez echoed the sentiment. "Publicity is the main thing," he said. He had already printed postcard-sized advertisements, which he wanted to bundle in a local paper, "but the city told me to wait," he said. "Wait for what? They're ready to go."

He had also considered alternative locations—including the Hermosa Avenue spot—but those spaces come with their own headaches: Street closures require extra police involvement, and having a wide enough lane for emergency vehicles would be problematic, "especially because the vendors with vegetables are required to have their trucks behind them," said Rodriguez.

Perfectly illustrating the difficulty of planning and managing a weekly Farmers Market was the fact that even Rodriguez was unaware of the hiatus announcement as he went about his duties at Wednesday's market.

Asked for his reaction just hours after the announcement was made in a Chamber of Commerce newsletter, Rodriquez was caught by surprise. "I haven't heard anything about this," he said. And the news only stoked the manager's frustration with the many forces at play in the process. "When they hired me, I brought about 10 new vendors with me that weren't here before. Once I tell them about this, I'm not sure they'll come back again."

With the city taking 10% of all sales made at the Farmers Market, losing so many vendors and subsequent revenue would make finding a new management company all the more difficult, according to Rodriguez.

Though poor economic performance is the primary cause of Scholastic Garden's departure, the situation is not exclusive to the Sierra Madre. According to Castle, the Scholastic Gardens board "came to the decision that they needed to phase out of the farmer's market business."

A nonprofit organization that supports various nutritional and public health efforts, Scholastic wasn't "able to sustain enough interest in the market to make it profitable to do charitable donations according to our mission statement." The market in Sierra Madre is the fourth that the organization has closed, with one still to go. As for which city's market is next on the chopping block, representatives from Scholastic Gardens were not available for further comment, though the only market listed on their site aside from Sierra Madre's is that of Toluca Lake. 

"We very much enjoyed being [in Sierra Madre], and we're not happy that we're having to close the markets," Castle said, "we'd have loved to turn it over to someone without any closure needed."

Weaver echoed this sentiment, saying that "was our original goal, to try to make it where nobody would even know that we had stopped service."

The city has tentatively set the timetable for a new presentation to the Commission in late December, with a possible subsequent RFP being issued sometime in January.

"I would expect the RFP process to be completed in probably March or April, "said Weaver, who added that would mean a new market could be setup and running by "as early as May or June."

"There's not a huge rush on this because even if we were to issue the RFP now, it would be very unusual to start a farmers market in the middle of Winter," said Weaver. "We have a little time to do our due diligence."