Ventura Farmers’ Market Hopes to Finally Put Down Permanent Roots

After being uprooted once, then again, Ventura’s Saturday morning farmers’ market may at last find a permanent home--at the northeast corner of Santa Clara and Palm streets.

“This is the best thing,” said Karen Wetzel, operations manager for the Ventura County Certified Farmers’ Market Assn., which runs the market. “There is much better parking for the customers, and there are quite a few adjacent parking lots.”

A final decision is at least a week off. The City Council gave the new spot its environmental approval Monday night, and a public hearing on the matter has been scheduled for Feb. 18. If all goes well, local farmers could be hawking flowers and produce at the new venue as early as mid-March, Wetzel said.

The farmers’ market--the largest in Ventura County--lures thousands of people to downtown Ventura every Saturday between 8:30 a.m. and noon, to browse through stalls selling such goods as fresh strawberries, spicy pistachios, bags of oranges and bouquets of sunflowers.

The open-air market was started in 1986 as a downtown redevelopment project. Since 1989, it has been run as an independent, nonprofit farmers’ cooperative. Although its popularity has increased, large downtown development projects have chased the market from various locations.

The market was held at the corner of Figueroa and Santa Clara streets through 1991, when the 2nd District Court of Appeal building was constructed at that site. Then the market moved to its present spot, in a parking lot near the corner of Santa Clara and California streets., Now, the market is getting forced out again--this time by a four-story, 500-space parking structure.

“They have assured me there is no master plan for this new site,” Wetzel said.

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The city has worked closely with the association, which represents dozens of farmers mostly from Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, to find a location with sufficient parking, and that would not block traffic, Wetzel said. The group also wanted more space, which it will have in the new space.

Some store owners in the 500 block of Main Street have complained that the farmers’ market’s current location used up valuable downtown parking on Saturday mornings. But many other downtown merchants strongly supported the market’s presence, saying it attracts hordes of shoppers downtown who might not otherwise come. They also said it gets people out of their cars and walking downtown.

“It brings in about 2,000 people a week,” said Tom Wood, operations manager of Bella Maggiore Inn and restaurant on California Street. “That’s a good number of people to be brought right to your doorstep.”

Wood says that by moving the market south of the 300 block of Main Street, perhaps businesses on the other end of the block can begin to reap some of the benefits of increased Saturday pedestrian traffic.

Wetzel estimates that the farmers’ market brings as many as 3,000 people out on a sunny summer Saturday, and about 1,500 people even in the middle of winter.

The association has no figures available to show exactly how sales at other businesses increase as a result of having the farmers’ market downtown. But Wetzel said that at the Montgomery Ward store on Mills Road, where a similar farmers’ market is held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesdays, store representatives say business increases about 17% on market day.

The City Council’s public hearing on the proposed new location for the farmers’ market will be held Feb. 18 at 3 p.m. in City Hall, 501 Poli St., in conference room D.

Tim O’Neil, president of the Downtown Ventura Assn., said he hoped the market could find a site closer to “ground zero,” at the corner of Main and California streets, but he is happy with the proposed new location.

“People are going to follow that market, just like they followed it before,” he said.