What About a Centennial Square Farm Market?
I think I have lost count of the amount of articles I have written about plans to upgrade Centennial Square and after the failure of the last push to improve the square and make it usable, I may have given up. But just because we are not taking on some big ambitious project to make the square usable, doesn’t mean there aren’t maybe other options to get some vibrancy and pedestrian activity into the square throughout the year. I know during the summer that we do get a time when it is filled with musical performances and a few festivals and that is great. It still remains empty for a large part of the year, and due to the way it is laid out, will remain pretty deserted on days that it is not activated by something. So what might be a way to activate it at least one day a week year round?
If you read my recent article on my trip to Paris, you will know that I stayed in Neuilly Sur Seine, west of the city centre. One of the best parts of staying where we did was that a two block walk away was the large Place du Marché des Sablons. This is a huge open space that gets filled like a tide going in and out by the tables and chairs of the surrounding cafés in the afternoons. In addition to the activation by the cafés, three days a week (Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays) the space is filled by the Marché des Sablons from early morning until mid afternoon. The quality of the produce and the variety of other foods was impressive. There were farm vendors and also cheese, deli and seafood vendors. It was absolutely amazing. We were able on least two occasions to get a good enough selection of food to make up our lunch and dinner with lots of stuff left over for other days. One the most important aspects of the Marché des Sablons is that it is open the entire year. Cleverly, the stalls all have built in awnings to keep you out of the rain while you are perusing the goods. On the times we visited the market, the weather was anything, but perfect and yet the market was bustling with locals doing their grocery shopping. I imagine in the summer it would be maybe too busy (thought likely not something the vendors mind).
I do understand that the market culture in Paris is very deep-seated and maybe not transferable completely to Victoria. That said, it does seem that Victorians do like their markets when they occur. My three favourite are the Moss Street Market, The Oaklands Sunset Market and the Gorge Farmers Market. With the exception of the Moss Street Market, I don’t think there are any others around Victoria that are year round. I think this is more of a perception problem than anything else. The market in Paris is considered a normal part of life and the weekly grocery shop. Markets in Victoria are a destination that are more like a mini-festival that happen to have a couple of farm vendors. This may be partly about what has been needed to get Victorians out of their cars and grocery stores to try markets, rather than just the way we like to experience markets, but maybe that is changing? It seems to me with a growing urban population that is relying on driving less and less, there is a possibility that a couple of proper markets could likely not just survive, but thrive throughout the year in the city.
Parisian Markets including the Marché des Sablons
This brings me back to Centennial Square. Before anything, to create a market, you need a space to put it that is available and could accommodate the market stalls. Even better if there is a decent sized population of residents in the area that can get to the market easily. Centennial Square fills all of these requirements perfectly. I think that if the City chose a day of the week like a Tuesday or Thursday and ran the market from early morning to mid-afternoon, it would take off and provide some new vitality to Centennial Square and an alternative food option for downtown residents and workers. The key to the success would be for the City to contract with an outside society rather than try and run it themselves and to keep the cost of having the stalls as low as possible especially for the first couple of years to make sure that there was a real opportunity for the vendors to see the value of doing it. If it was successful enough, maybe a second day of the week could be added. One of the interesting things about the Marché des Sablons was that local retailers in the area had a stall. For example, one of the stalls at the market was operated by the cheese store that was located just a couple of blocks from the market, so the market actually brought them more customers than normal, rather than taking customers away from them. This is something to consider if there was concern raised by nearby merchants, maybe as already city tax paying businesses they get a stall free of charge for the first two years?
I really think that having a proper market in Centennial Square a day or two a week would work. The location of the parkade was at one time our indoor public market and that was 100 years ago! And even more recently, the block of Government Street just to the west of Centennial Square held a weekly market on Sundays through the 1990s and early 2000s.
Let me know your thoughts, could Victoria have a year round market in Centennial Square? Where else would work or be better? Let me know in the comments!
The plaza that holds the Marché des Sablons when the market isn’t there.
