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As of the writing of this article, the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market just concluded its first Saturday market at its new home in the Railyard! For those of you who have been aware of this 10-year odyssey, you know what a big deal this is. For those of you new to the area, let me quickly fill you in.
The Santa Fe Farmers’ Market is 41-years old. It’s NM’s oldest and largest farmers market, and over the years, we’ve had to move around a lot. We started in the parking lot of St. Anne’s Church on Agua Fria Street. Then we moved to Alto Street, then to the Sanbusco parking lot, then to the south side of Outside Magazine. Then, as things started to heat up in the Railyard, and the City starting asking people what they wanted the Railyard to be like, we moved to the corner of Cerrillos and Guadalupe. We started to see a trend: downtown open space was quickly disappearing. Sure enough, after five years on that corner, the development of the Railyard commenced. Our site was to be turned into a park so we had to vacate for the 2007 season. We went to DeVargas Center. 2008 dawned. DeVargas couldn’t accommodate us anymore, and we moved to the PERA parking lot, this time to wait out the completion of our new building in the Railyard.
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Moving is hard because the farmers’ sales go down 30% until customers get used to the new location. But we could handle the moving, especially in the last several years, because we knew that permanency was on the way. In 2002, the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market created the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Institute, a closely aligned nonprofit. The Institute’s purpose is to fund, build and manage a permanent Farmers’ Market in the Railyard District, implement programs to promote agriculture in northern NM, and educate consumers about the cultural, nutritional and economic benefits of buying locally produced foods and agricultural products.
In 2005, the Institute signed an 80-year lease in the Railyard – and as of the summer of 2008, we have a brand new $4.8 million facility that will give our agricultural producers a LEED-certified home for generations to come.
A lot happened in the 3-plus years it took us to get the building up. For example, we raised $4.4 million toward the project’s cost. We worked with community members and politicians, lobbied the legislature, talked to civic groups and even held raffles to get us as close as possible to our goal. The legislature gave us $1.8 million for the building over several years, and just recently, the community overtook the legislature as our largest donor, giving more than $2 million to help us secure the farmers’ futures. So many people were involved! And for so many good reasons!
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