Bill of Fare

Last night at the Common Council meeting, the civic equivalent of haggis was served to some picky Council diners. Following on the heels of a Tribune article, Wednesday the 19th, which revealed that a Farmer's Market redo had arrived at the table ready for consumption, came news that we're going be about $75,000 short of paying the tab.

While the Council had appropriated $270,000 for an addition at the existing market site, because of grading, and drainage work at the expansion, those funds would be insufficient. A discussion of the new reality revealed little stomach for additional funds for the expansion.

A somewhat offhand remark led to further exploration following the meeting. The remark was a question, "had it been considered to move the Farmer's Market to the municipal parking garage?" Prior to looking for ways to meet the new funding requirements of the Farmer's Market expansion, at the current site, it might be worthwhile to consider some of the benefits of moving to a new venue at the parking garage, which is hardly used on weekends.

Final action to award contracts on  work at the current site is slated for the Board of Works meeting coming up on Tuesday, February 25. If awarded, work on the current site would be contractually on track to begin. In relation to item number 9, below, the future of a portion of downtown New Albany would be settled for generations, and at a lower level of general prosperity than our city deserves, and recent positive action there shows we are capable of mounting. Handling that property today, with the future in mind, can help sustain prosperity for our posterity. 

1. One of the prime factors driving up the cost of the current site's retrofit is grading of the existing parking lot to make it handicapped-accessible. The garage is completely handicapped-accessible, and even includes an elevator.

2. Focusing just on the flat surface of the first level, the garage is as large, or nearly as large as the existing market, and would provide covered market space for vendors and shoppers alike.

3. Vendors could park their cars and trucks further back in the garage in the shade, so their produce or other wares could be protected from the summer sun. The same parking pattern might free up spaces for shoppers at the market which are now taken up by some vendors.

4. Because Market Street is divided by the median, and is currently one way, the Saturday Farmer's Market could use the north side of Market Street for street vendors, along with spaces inside the garage, especially on good-weather days. While on rainy days, vendors and shoppers would more fully appreciate the covered spaces inside the garage. All this would be done without closing a street, as is done now on Bank Street.

5. Because of the mass of concrete of the garage itself, and because of the open-sided construction of the facility, breezes flowing through the structure would make for more comfortable shopping in summer's heat.

6. The Farmer's Market, in its current location, has become successful and is a welcome addition to downtown New Albany. Its success could easily be moved a few hundred feet down the street to the garage, which could help bolster that part of the downtown.

7. Another driver of the high cost of the proposed expansion market is public restrooms and storage space for them site. The parking garage was built with manned attendant booths. While these are no longer manned, it is likely the original design of the garage may have included, at least, roughed-in sanitary hookups for the benefit of the attendants; these hookups, if in that original design, would cut thousands of dollars from the cost of the bathrooms. Even if not in place, they could be built within or near the existing structure, for prices competitive with the planned bathrooms at the current site.

8. Just because the market were relocated to the parking garage, there is no need to be hasty in removing the existing structure. If, after a reasonable time, the garage location, for some reason didn't work, then the expansion of the current facility could be revisited.

9. If, on the other hand, the market were successful at the new garage site, (and it likely would be, because the local food movement is real and has been embraced by so many) then the current market site at Bank and Market Streets could be returned to service as a fully functional component of downtown commercial revitalization. It makes little sense to have one of the most economically valuable, as well as spatially valuable, pieces of property in the entire downtown, off the tax rolls, and dedicated to only intermittent use for eight or ten days a month six or seven months out of the year.

If set on a different course, that corner could be thrown open to a design challenge which could yield exciting possibilities not now visualized.

If, on the other hand, the City commits hundreds of thousands of dollars to that corner, the very expenditure itself is likely to shackle us to that piece of property, while other more profitable, enhancing, and defining, uses of the property are turned away from the downtown and, rather, sent to the outer reaches of town where development, while necessary and welcome, contributes less to what is the true heart of our City.

10. As a community, we have spent millions of dollars on the parking garage. Relocating the Farmers Market to that site will save most of the $270,000 allocated for a facelift of the current market. It will help us benefit from the sunk cost of the garage, while opening up the corner of Bank and Market to a fuller contribution to a more prosperous future for New Albany.

For these reasons, and probably more, I believe we need to hold off on awarding contracts for the current plan, and see if the parking garage at State and Market Streets offers a good alternative to the existing site of the Farmer's Market at Bank and Market Streets. The two sites may only be a few hundred feet away from each other, but they are hundreds of thousands of dollars apart in cost, and worlds away in the possibilities they offer to the downtown's future.