Thursday, May. 15, 2008

Thursday Farmers Market put on hold

City cancels downtown festival for the summer, plans makeover for popular event

By LESLIE ALBRECHT
lalbrecht@mercedsun-star.com

So long, license plate frames; hello, arugula.

The Thursday night festival that's been a downtown staple since the 1980s is about to get a makeover. The city's new downtown strategy calls for the event be "re-branded" as something more "appropriate" for downtown.

Translation: The guy selling knives can take a hike, but farmers and artists will be welcome.

As part of the transformation, the city wants the Thursday night event to take a break this year. Ordinarily, the festival runs from May through September. Main Street between M and K streets is closed off at 6 p.m. to make way for vendors and entertainers. Last year the festival drew crowds ranging from about 250 to 500, depending on the temperature and entertainment, said organizer Mike Waite, president of the Merced Downtown Association.

This year, Main Street will stay quiet as the city retools the event. The idea for the revamp cropped up when the city wrote its new downtown strategy, the document that will guide downtown development for the next six years.

The strategy -- written by a citizen task force -- suggests downtown improvements such as enhanced lighting, better signage and more for-sale housing. Among the recommendations is to "create a superior ambience" by restructuring the Thursday night farmers market.

Several factors drove the suggestion, said Daniel Ainslie, a development coordinator for Merced's redevelopment agency. The police department was devoting several officers to the relatively small event. Most downtown business owners told task force members that the Thursday night festival was hurting their business.

"The crowds that were coming were not really people that were looking at shopping downtown," said Ainslie. One restaurant owner even packed up his lawn furniture and put it inside during the Thursday night festival.

Downtown business owners also said they were worried about the merchandise vendors sold. Either the merchandise competed directly with downtown businesses, or vendors were selling lower-quality goods that seemed more at home in a flea market than a farmers market. For example, one salesman hawked license plate frames featuring Confederate flags and silhouettes of women in nonfamily friendly poses. There was also a vendor who tried to sell knives last year -- festival organizers put a stop to that.

"Certain behaviors are encouraged when certain goods are sold," said Ainslie. "(Some) things that were being sold were distracting from the ambience that downtown was trying to create."

In the next three weeks, a new downtown steering committee will meet publicly to talk over plans for the new version of the Thursday night festival. The revamped version will likely lean more toward a traditional farmers market, said Ainslie, with fresh produce, homemade food and arts and crafts. Instead of outside food vendors, the new festival could invite downtown restaurants to open their kitchens and set up a "Taste of Merced"-type event, said Ainslie.

Waite says he's following the city's lead and is eager to get started.

In the meantime, vendors such as Doug Cromwell say they'll take a financial hit without income from their booths this summer. Cromwell has been running MacDoogle's Old Time Kettle Korn stand since 1997. He's heard complaints that the festival had become a magnet for rowdy teenagers, but he had no such problems last year. He also questioned the idea of suspending the festival for a year. "I can understand them in a way wanting to revamp it, but taking a year off is not going to do it," said Cromwell. "I know there's a lot of vendors that have been going down there for years that are going to be losing out on income that they rely upon."

Other downtown merchants have plans to put together an alternative event, said Tami Davidson, owner of Diva Accessories in the 600 block of Main Street. She said she's been talking to other business owners about organizing a "downtown stroll" on Thursdays, when businesses would stay open late. "Even though we won't have all the food booths in the street, we'll still have the merchants that are welcoming people with open arms downtown," said Davidson. "There's all kinds of neat stores down here -- you just have to get down here to appreciate it."

Reporter Leslie Albrecht can be reached at (209) 385-2484 or lalbrecht@mercedsun-star.com.