The Park Ridge Farmers’ Market is selling fresh fruits and vegetables, breads, cheeses, meats, hot foods, pastries, honey, popcorn, flowers and more through the last week of October, but city officials and market organizers are talking about longer-term plans for the popular Park Ridge attraction — including a potential location change, should that become necessary.
Any potential move is in the earliest phases of discussion, market and city officials said.
But with the market, which hosts about 35 vendors every week from May to October, taking place partially on a private lot, the early fall has seen a handful of discussions centered on ensuring the long-term viability of the tradition in case the current setup stops working.
Farmers’ Market Committee Co-Market Master Karen Grunschel, who said somewhere between 950 and 1,300 customers visit the market each Saturday, emphasized how preliminary the discussions around a location change have been so far.
“No decisions have been made,” she said. “The whole thing really is based on the fact that that parking lot that AT&T is on may not be available to us in the future.”
According to a city memo presented at a recent Park Ridge City Council Committee of the Whole meeting, the market takes place on a piece of land made up of 12 parcels that belonged to AT&T. AT&T still owns eight of those parcels, but in May 2021, four sold to a real estate investment company called Reign Capital.
The memo notes that should either company decide the Farmer’s Market can no longer take place on the property, “the City would have very limited recourse in response.”
Currently, City Director of Community Preservation and Development Drew Awsumb said, there is no indication that the market wouldn’t be able to continue operating in its current location on Prairie Avenue.
The current plan is for the city to request its usual one-year renewal of its agreement with AT&T to use the lot, Awsumb said.
City Manager Joe Gilmore typically coordinates that renewal and told Pioneer Press in an email he had not yet begun that process, but expected to do so in the late winter or early spring.
Awsumb said the city had not heard that AT&T or Reign Capital had any plans to restrict the use of the land.
However, were either company to decide otherwise, then “it would be virtually impossible for the market [to] operate as-is,” Awsumb said. “It would necessitate some degree of re-configuration.”
With that in mind, Awsumb said the current goal is to think ahead to that contingency.
“We have brainstormed and evaluated where the market could relocate if forced to do so,” he said. “The crux is being proactive and preparing for that possibility.”
According to the memo distributed to city officials at the Committee of the Whole Meeting, Hodges Park and the area on Summit Avenue near the Metra station came up as two possibilities for an eventual relocation at the most recent Market Committee meeting.
“These and other potential locations may offer greater visibility, capacity to expand, existing public gathering space, ability to invest in new infrastructure, and better partnership with local businesses,” it said.
And, Grunschel added, “we really need a lot of space.” Each vendor pays to have two units of space for their tent, which are two parking spots wide.
“So in theory, they have four parking spaces, and then they can come out a certain distance from the curb,” she added.
Aside from vendors’ tents, the kids’ tent, community tent, music tent and business tent add to the market’s footprint, which Grunschel estimated draws upwards of 1,000 people each week from Park Ridge, Niles, Glenview and Chicago, among other nearby communities.
Should the market move its location, the Park Ridge Farmers’ Market Commission and City Council would both be involved.
For now, Grunschel said she’s looking forward to closing out the end of the 2022 season with an exciting final market day featuring trick or treating, balloons and face painting for children.
“We really just try to make it a fun event at the end of the season for everybody to come and say goodbye,” Market Manager Liz Cetaudella said.
A handful of vendors will offer what Cetaudella called “drops,” or periodic buying opportunities over the winter. Customers will be able to come to the lot where the market takes place during the spring and summer and pick up their orders from participating vendors.
Cetaudella didn’t have a firm number of vendors that would be doing drops over the winter – “a lot of it is logistics right now,” she said.
Some of the vendors will transition to indoor markets during Park Ridge’s off-season. But Cetaudella said the connection between vendors and market-goers is what will bring the crowds back to Park Ridge next May.
“The most important thing that I love most about the market is the relationship that our customers have with our farmers and our vendors,” she said. “To me, it has always felt like a family.”
The Park Ridge Farmers’ Market operates Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. through the end of October. Its last day of operation for the 2022 season will be Oct. 29.