The City of Guelph has a vision to support its local food economy by revamping the Guelph Farmers’ Market and to do so it’s reaching out to the community for its ideas.
The city put out a call for ideas on Tuesday morning— through a partnership that aligns with the Market’s vision— to expand community use of the space.
The city's general manager of economic development and tourism, John Regan, said while the farmers’ market is a Saturday market, the city is looking for ways to promote local food and agriculture every day of the week.
“I’m so pumped to see all the ideas that people may have to activate the market further,” said Regan.
“It already is successful on its own. How can we make it more successful and how can we activate that space because it's really non active for six days of the week.”
Regan said the project right now is a blank canvas and the purpose of getting community involvement is to fill that canvas with vibrant and creative ideas to benefit everyone whether its residents, not for profit organizations, vendors and social enterprise sectors.
“We don't always have to have the best ideas from the city’s perspective and so we’re reaching out to those not for profit entrepreneurs and those social enterprises on how else can we activate it. Does it mean something as simple as just maybe we run the market more days a week? Maybe there's an opportunity for food education, maybe there's an opportunity for food training,” said Regan.
Not-for-profit, social enterprise and organizations have until May 10 to submit their proposals which will be reviewed by the city’s Smart Cities office and economic development and tourism department.
Regan said public consultations to revamp the farmers’ market began in 2017 when vendors and community members expressed a strong desire to grow the market to its full potential.
Regan said the city then saw an opportunity to improve the governance model and decided that while they do that, it's important to reach out to the vendors and stakeholders to gather their input.
The city had initially planned to take a proposal back to council in the summer of 2020 which was delayed because of the pandemic. However, they continued working toward creating a refreshed vision through public consultations.
Regan said he sees no vision to relocate the farmers’ market that operates in a 11,400 square foot building that sees roughly 3,000 people on a Saturday during the pandemic.
“It's been in operation for 200 years. It's a cornerstone in our community and we have space there that we think could possibly be activated that is going to augment the already awesome things that happen there with the vendors,” said Regan.
He added that the pandemic is also strengthening the ties community members have with local food with individuals coming from neighbouring communities because they trust the quality of food and products present at the farmers’ market.
“We have a very strong economy in the City of Guelph and Guelph-Wellington. Agriculture is definitely deeply ingrained in our roots, in our society, in our community and that's obvious because the market has survived 200 years,” said Regan.
“That’s pretty darn impressive. There's not that many that can boast that success. So when you have something that is successful, what can you do to build upon it to help create jobs, to help create wealth, help create healthy communities, how do we work with Smart Cities and our future group?”
