The Park Ridge Farmer’s Market Committee emphasized at a Nov. 30 meeting that its preference would be to keep the market in its current location. They arrived at the position after several weeks of discussing a possible relocation.
The farmers’ market is looking at alternate operating locations because part of the Prairie Avenue site on which it currently operates was sold to a real estate investment company, Reign Capital. AT&T, which still owns some of the site, sold some of the parcels to Reign Capital in May 2021.
The discussion about whether to move the market is powered by the concern that Reign Capital or AT&T could withdraw its permission to use the parking lot.
Per a city memo written earlier this year, the city would have “extremely limited recourse” if either entity withdrew its permission to use the site.
And since the city doesn’t typically begin arranging with the lot owners to use the site until the new year, staff would have a relatively short window to respond to a withdrawal of permission before the market starts up in May.
But committee members emphasized that their first choice would be to keep the market where it has been.
“We’re just being proactive in case we lose the AT&T lot,” committee member David Arena said. “My intention would be to stay where we’re at, keep it consistent.”
His fellow committee member Genie Taddeo agreed and said she’d like to see the city think about alternate locations besides Hodges Park.
“As a committee member, I would like to see more options,” she said.
Park Ridge Director of Community Preservation and Development Drew Awsumb explained that the city is looking at a relatively restricted set of possible options for the market.
Once staff account for parking and space needs, the desire to keep the market in the city’s Uptown district and the goal of getting the market off of private property, Awsumb said the list of options gets very short.
“You take it out of Uptown and [if] you are willing to do business with another private property owner then you have basically every property in town on the list,” he said. “But if you add those two, there’s a much smaller [list].”
Three public commenters raised issues of access to businesses and parking if the market moves to one of the city’s suggested locations of Hodges Park.
Diane Salazar, who owns deVine Hair Salon on Vine Street, said she and her colleagues weren’t opposed to community events taking place in town, but said she felt the city hadn’t appropriately engaged her on a change that could impact her salon.
Her chief concern was parking.
“Our clients have a hard time on a regular Saturday getting to the salon with the parking situation,” Salazar said. “There’s not a lot of spots available, anywhere.”
Further, Salazar said, Hodges Park already hosts many events like Vine Street Barbecue and National Night Out.
“There’s many parks in Park Ridge that are idle,” Salazar said. “Why does it have to be Hodges?”
Resident Stephanie Faley also made a public comment asking for more formal engagement with the area businesses, noting that her husband recently had tried to get a haircut on Vine Street while the barbecue festival was on and hadn’t been able to get into the business.
“I consider [the barber] a stakeholder as well,” Faley said. “You keep using the word stakeholders. I felt like there should be more formal surveys.”
Awsumb later told Pioneer Press the city had sent a staffer into de Vine Hair Salon and the other possibly affected businesses multiple times and left follow-up contact information.
“We want people to be engaged,” Awsumb said. “They need to feel like they have a voice in it and that we’re working with them. And we felt like those forms of contacts and multiple in-person visits is a way to build that relationship.”
After listening to the public comments, Arena reiterated to the meeting attendees that the committee and the city’s main goal was to make sure the market wouldn’t be subject to the decisions of a private entity.
“The thought is to move it to some place where we’re not beholden to the owner,” he said. “We’re just in the thinking phase of it right now and hopefully we don’t have to move it.”
Awsumb concurred and said if the market committee prefers to keep the event on Prairie Avenue, then the city wanted to have a backup option ready.
“This is a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ type of approach,’ he said.