Carolyn Fath
Organizers of the Westside Community Market were in a real pickle. Since 2005, Wisconsin’s Department of Administration has granted a yearly permit for the 50-vendor farmers’ market to use the large surface parking lot at the Hill Farms State Transportation Building on Saturday mornings.
But with construction already underway to redevelop the 21-acre site at University Avenue and Segoe Road, the state was giving organizers the cold shoulder when they inquired if they’d be allowed to operate at the site during continuing construction in 2017.
Even less certain was whether the Westside Community Market could stay at Hill Farms after construction was complete on the controversial $196 private development deal hatched by the Walker administration to replace the aging Department of Transportation building.
“Despite multiple attempts to try to get a seat at the table, we still haven’t had any discussions with [the developers],” says Cassie Noltnerwyss, owner of Crossroads Community Farms and board president of the Westside Community Market. “But sometimes silence is an answer. So we decided we needed to find a new location.”
So the market’s board contacted longtime local food activist Barry Orton, who helped found the market and has helped out with logistics ever since. Throughout the summer, Orton scouted a new home for the market and eventually struck up talks with UW Health to secure use of the parking lot at its Digestive Health Center, 750 University Row. The clinic is just a half-mile west from the Hill Farms property. A deal was finalized in early September, ensuring that local farmers would still be able to sell vegetables, meats and other local food products there at least through the 2017 season. The market will debut there in April 2017.
Orton praises the market as being a real resource for nearby residents. “Unlike the downtown farmers’ market, we don’t get many tourists or looky-loos. Our customers are locals who usually come each week, buy what they need, say hi to their friends and head home,” says Orton.
Orton says the many seniors who live in the apartments along Sheboygan Avenue are also frequent customers at the Westside Community Market, and the one drawback he sees with the new location is that it will be harder for that population to walk to. “I’m trying to secure some grant money to get a shuttle bus going,” says Orton.
Ben Zimmerman, the market’s manager, says the Westside Community Market regularly attracts thousands of customers in any given week.
It operates every Saturday from April through the first week of November. The livelihoods of dozens of farmers and food producers would have been in jeopardy if a new location hadn’t been secured.
“For many of our vendors, this is the biggest market that they do. It’s a 30-week season, so it's a big chunk of change for them,” says Zimmerman.
Noltnerwyss, who sells 55 kinds of fruits and vegetables at the market, appreciates that the state allowed the Westside Community Market to operate at Hill Farms for over a decade.
“I understand that it’s not our property and it’s been a gift that we’ve been able to be there for so long. Since its change over to private hands, I get that we aren’t guaranteed that space,” says Noltnerwyss. “But it would have been really nice to talk those folks about how important this market is to the community.”
For now, the Westside Community Market might be able to operate at the Digestive Health Clinic through 2018, but long-term, the market’s site is still uncertain. Noltnerwyss says market organizers are holding out hope that one day they will be able to return to Hill Farms, which is more convenient for many residents and for shoppers at Hilldale. Yet she also recognizes that as Madison continues to become more densely developed, “it might mean we need to march a little further west, where there is the kind of space we need.”
