Sunday farmers’ market with Holley vendor didn’t benefit village

Posted 27 August 2013 at 12:00 am

Editor:

In response to the letter from Al Capurso, with all due respect, Albion has a very good farmers’ market on Saturdays (at the Save-A-Lot parking lot). The access is much easier (no blocked off street access and no on-street parking needed).

The argument is made that this will help revitalize downtown. I ask, “How?”

Nearly all of the stores are closed on Sundays downtown, for a very good reason. They are locally owned and the proprietors like their Sundays off. How is bringing a farmers’ market to the downtown area going to help increase business for them? If they were open, it would create hardships for them by upsetting traffic/parking patterns and offering potential competition for limited spending available.

This is a problem because none of the money spent at the market will stay in the village. None of the farms are in the village, so virtually all the money spent would go out of the village.

While it seemed to be a pleasant experience for Mr. Capurso to buy vegetables from the Vendettis, he could just as easily had a pleasant experience buying his goods from the farmers’ market the village already has in the Save-A-Lot parking lot on Saturdays.

One needs to ask themselves why the Vendetti Farms are not offering their wares at the Saturday market?

A better way of revitalizing downtown would be to encourage a fresh fruit and vegetable market that bought its produce locally and sold it from a store, where village taxes and fees would be collected on a regular basis, rather than allowing a farmer from the Holley area to come in to the village and syphon off money that might otherwise be spent in the village with village businesses.

Mark Vosburgh
Albion