Sturgeon Bay Farmers Market Positioned to Change Hands

A location change was also proposed, but Destination Sturgeon Bay says nothing is set in stone

Every Saturday from early June through mid-October, residents and visitors flock to the Sturgeon Bay Farmers Market, located in Market Square between City Hall and the Destination Sturgeon Bay Visitor Center.

The booths selling produce, crafts, art, plants, jewelry, food and more are not assisted by much promotion or marketing. Neither is there a dedicated manager or anyone charged with overseeing more than basic services, including setup, teardown and garbage control.

“We really know that as much as Mike [Barker, city municipal services director] and his department would like to do the best job they can, it’s not their main focus,” said Helen Bacon, a Common Council alder.

As a result, the popular farmers market hasn’t received a lot of attention. But that could change. Destination Sturgeon Bay (DSB), the full-time marketing and events-planning nonprofit community association for the city, is poised to assume management of the event beginning with this season. 

“We coordinate events; that’s what we do,” said Cameryn Ehlers-Kwaterski, DSB’s executive director. “We saw it as a good opportunity to grow the market and make it even better than it is right now.” 

Last season the market had 52 vendors, down from upwards of 75 before the pandemic required vendor distancing.

“Another factor is [that] we weren’t doing the daily vendors, where they could come in and rent a booth for the day,” said Patty Quinn, a part-time city municipal-services assistant. 

Quinn spent some of her Saturdays providing the management presence the market needs, but she rotated that responsibility with other city employees as available.

“I have no doubt they [DSB] will give it 150% and get it back to where it needs to be,” Quinn said. “I’ll miss it, but I’ll still be down there spending money.” 

The idea of transferring management to DSB was well received during the city’s Parks and Recreation Committee meeting Jan. 26. The committee unanimously recommended the move, and it will now go to the Sturgeon Bay Common Council for official consideration Feb. 15.

“As far as how we go about assigning the market responsibility, we’ll come up with a license agreement of some sort to DSB and charge all that responsibility to them,” said Josh VanLieshout, city administrator.

Vendors pay for booths, so the city would lose about $10,000 in revenue; however, during the past two years with COVID-19, it’s been more of a breakeven, VanLieshout said.

“The labor input doesn’t change much,” VanLieshout said. “What does affect it is the number of vendors. I think the experience could be better.”

So does Destination Sturgeon Bay. And the organization is not short of ideas or enthusiasm for making a positive impact on the important community market by expanding vendors who are on a waiting list, making the market a part of Walkable Sturgeon Bay and increasing parking spaces. 

This included the idea of moving the market from its parking-lot location in front of City Hall to 3rd Avenue, with two blocks closed between Oregon Street and Michigan Avenue. 

“And that’s really where the problem is,” said Bacon, who also chairs the Parks and Recreation Committee. 

About 12 vendors spoke during that Jan. 26 Parks and Recreation Committee meeting, and although only one opposed the management transfer, none of them liked the idea of a location change.

Martha Bennett, who sells her tie-dyed products at the market, said a move to 3rd Avenue wouldn’t work logistically.

“Our configuration is, we put our car across the back, and then the tent right up in front of that, and that’s 18.5 feet for two spaces by 18.5 feet,” she said. “There wouldn’t be a lot of space with vendor vehicles and booths taking up so much of the street.”

If they couldn’t use their vehicles in the current configuration, they would lose their loading and unloading convenience, and sometimes a tent tie-up for the windier days, Bennett said. She said DSB should see how vendors currently operate before making changes that could negatively affect those operations.

But things have changed since that Jan. 26 Parks and Recreation Committee meeting, Ehlers-Kwaterski said. Having received feedback from the vendors who said they wanted to stay put, “there’s not a plan that’s set in stone,” she said. “We have a lot of flexibility, and we want them to know we’re open to compromise and want to come up with a plan everybody is happy with.” 

The lines of communication have been opened, and vendor meetings planned where decisions can be made as a group, she said.

“At the end of the day, we have their best interests at heart,” Ehlers-Kwaterski said. “For a lot of these vendors, this is their livelihood. We don’t take that lightly. We want them to have the best season they can have.”

The Common Council will decide about the management transfer during its Feb. 15 meeting. Ehlers-Kwaterski said she hoped to have an updated plan for the market by that Feb. 15 meeting.

“We want to do what’s best for the vendors, and we are listening,” she said.