Upstart Farmers’ Market Sows Seeds of Discord

It’s not quite the Hatfields and the McCoys, but a pesky dispute is smoldering between those who run the Saturday farmers’ market and a new crop of produce dealers who ply their trade downtown on Thursday nights.

Organized by a group of downtown business owners, the new midweek farmers’ market and barbecue is aimed at attracting shoppers to the downtown district on warm summer nights.

But members of the Ventura County Certified Farmers’ Market are crying foul, claiming that the upstart market will eat away at their core business and sully a reputation they have carefully cultivated for 10 years.

“It’s not fair,” said Karen Schott, operation manager of the group that manages the Saturday market and four others held weekly in Ventura County.

“We’re operating as a certified farmers’ market with no exemptions,” she said. “They’re operating under a special events permit, which excludes them from having to have all of their separate licensing.”

Being certified means the produce at the Saturday markets is guaranteed to be organic and pesticide-free.

Launched last week to inject some economic life into downtown Ventura and provide a place for people to stroll and sip specialty coffee drinks, merchants say the summer weeknight series is already working.

Dozens of business owners plan to stay open late again tonight and the next two Thursdays. After that, organizers hope to make it a year-round event.

“We’d like to see people start to come to downtown Ventura to look around and see what neat shops we have,” said Diane Neveu, who owns the Book Mall of Ventura, located on the same block of Main Street as the new shindig.

“If people get in the habit of doing that, they’ll see what we have to offer,” she said.

Along the 300 and 400 blocks of Main Street, three downtown restaurateurs stir up a menu of barbecue and all the trimmings, with live entertainment sprinkled along sidewalks and street corners.

Many downtown business owners say the four-week promotion already has increased sales.

“Last week was great,” Neveu said. “It was so much fun. It showed how hungry people are for something fun to do in the town of Ventura, instead of having to go to Santa Barbara or San Luis Obispo.”

But the cash registers of local growers were not ringing so loudly last Saturday, two days after the first Thursday night barbecue and market.

“It was definitely slower,” Schott said. “But that may be partly due to another special event downtown, and a lot of our parking was blocked.”

What’s more, Schott and the growers she represents complain that the downtown merchants deliberately chose Thursday nights because the association hosts a farmers’ market in Thousand Oaks at the same time.

“Our farmers, who have helped build the reputation of Ventura’s farmers’ market, are not even able to participate,” Schott said.

“It’s not so much that we’re concerned about a threat,” she said. “Fair competition makes you improve your service. But the city originally brought us in as a redevelopment project and we’ve been very successful at it.”

For their part, city officials hardly know what to do about the impasse.

For years, they struggled to breathe life into the tourism industry downtown, even to the point of spending more than $4 million last year to spruce up the sidewalks and build a fountain at the foot of California Street.

Now, it seems, there may be too much interest in advertising the city’s historic commercial core.

“What you don’t want to do is have both Thursdays and Saturdays fail,” said Councilman Steve Bennett, the only council member to contact the farm cooperative after Schott sent letters to him and each of his colleagues.

“You want to make sure there’s enough demand for both markets,” Bennett said. “If that’s the case, great. But if there’s not, then you’ve got a tough decision to make.”