The Hanover Farmers Market is looking for new leadership and a new location after it was discontinued as part of the merger between the Hanover and Lebanon chambers of commerce, now called the Upper Valley Business Alliance.
Its most recent location, on the Dartmouth Green, also proved problematic, with limited access for vendors, scant parking for customers and questions about whether it was helping other retailers in town.
“As we were going through our various programs that each chamber offered, we had to make some decisions as to which programs we would carry forward into our new organization,” said Tracy Hutchins, who was previously president of the Hanover chamber and now is president of the business alliance. “It was decided, just in terms of bandwidth and support we could give to the farmers market at this time, (that) we would not be the sponsoring organization.”
The farmers market — which was held on Wednesday afternoons from mid-June to mid-October — just finished its 11th season, Hutchins said. When it started, it was held in the upper two levels of the town’s parking garage before it moved to the Dartmouth Green. The chamber hired a part-time employee as its market manager.
“Throughout the season we would have around 50 vendors, but at any given market we were somewhere around 30,” Hutchins said. “We could have 500 people on any given Wednesday.”
The market was not without its challenges. Vendors weren’t allowed to drive onto the green to unload, Hanover Town Manager Julia Griffin said. And parking was a challenge for vendors and patrons alike.
“It’s long been a source of frustration on part of the farmers,” Griffin said.
This year, the town closed down College Street during market days to try to address that.
“That posed problems for traffic flow in town,” Griffin said. “When you close off one key roadway consistently every week, it’s problematic.”
Some vendors did well at the Hanover Farmers Market while others struggled.
“They were good for us,” said Carley McKee, who owns Moon Castle Farm in Topsham, Vt., alongside her husband, Harold Brenkus.
The couple sold produce at the market for two seasons.
“We had a lot of regular, good customers that would come every week to get vegetables from us,” she said. “That in addition to the student foot traffic ended up being pretty good to us.”
Nancy LaRowe, food and farm coordinator at Vital Communities, said that prepared food vendors tended to do better business at the Hanover Farmers Market than traditional farmers.
“Many farms had tried it but discontinued vending there because they just didn’t have enough sales to warrant the effort and labor to go to that market,” LaRowe said. “The community needs to support the market and it really comes down to that.”
The market was originally created to bring more people downtown, with hopes that Hanover businesses would benefit from increased foot traffic.
“That was not what happened,” Griffin said. “It was far enough moved from downtown … that the merchants weren’t finding a benefit from market Wednesday.”
If the market were to continue, it would need to find a new location while ideally staying downtown.
“The big challenge is where? We’ve demonstrated the green is not ideal because you can’t get vehicles on the green,” Griffin said. “We’re struggling with ‘Where can we host this and still have it benefit downtown?’ ”
Allen and South streets, located off South Main Street, are both being floated as possible locations.
“I think those are the only two streets that might be viable. We’re constrained downtown,” Griffin said. “We haven’t given up yet, but it’s going to be challenging to figure out an alternate location to the green that’s as visible. One of the things we felt so strongly about is we want to do something that’s going to benefit our other retailers.”
Whoever took it on could turn to Vital Communities and the former Hanover chamber for assistance and contacts.
But a farmers market — and its vendors — cannot be successful without support from the community.
“They’re a wonderful community asset and they’re such a jewel for our communities, but farmers are businesses and if they don’t make a living they won’t continue to vend at farmers markets,” LaRowe said. “It’s the same with local business. You might need to make an extra effort, but when you don’t support the things you love that make the community great, they start disappearing.”
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
