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Posted Dec 2, 2011, 9:27 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Toronto
Posts: 52,200
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The Long Road to Reviving Boston's Public Market
Dec 01, 2011
By Steve Holt
Read More: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/art...ic-market/604/
Quote:
If the long-awaited Boston Public Market ever opens its doors – that is to say, if blueprints finally give way to blueberries – the city will end a half-century stretch without a year-round, indoor marketplace for local produce, meats, fish, breads, and crafts. Which is odd, given Boston’s place in history as the site of the colonies’ first marketplace in the 1630s and America’s first great market hall, Quincy Market, with roots going back to 1742. The absence of a public market in Boston has been called a “hole in the fabric of the city.” By as early as next summer, officials say they want to start transforming the 26,000-square-foot first floor of a downtown Boston building (known as Parcel 7) into the hub of what they hope will be a bustling market district. The site market organizers chose is in a state-owned building along the Rose Kennedy Greenway, the popular strip of urban parkland that used to be Interstate 93.
- The infamous “Big Dig,” the most expensive public works project in American history, left numerous land parcels, the air rights over several tunnel on-ramps and a few buildings sitting empty along the central artery, many of which were originally promised to nonprofits and cultural institutions. (On the Greenway itself, several developers have backed out of plans to build facilities housing a museum celebrating Boston’s history, a center for arts and culture, an indoor arboretum, and a YMCA.) Local food advocates and city and state politicians hope the Boston Public Market avoids a similar fate. But difficulty securing a permanent site and the slowness of state government have complicated the market project for over a decade, proving that good intentions are not enough to get a new urban market off the ground in the 21st century. “It’s up the politicians,” says John Lee, longtime general manager of Boston’s Allandale Farm, which has been working the same land and selling its products locally for over 250 years. “I’ve seen it go down the tubes so many times, I’m not holding my breath.”
- Only in the last 30 years have cities begun to rethink the role of public markets. After many were torn down in the mid-20th century, a few have stood the test of time – notably, Seattle’s Pike Place and Philadelphia’s Reading Station Market – their endurance a testament to the status they’ve garnered as not only culinary centers, but as social connectors. David O’Neil, an independent consultant on public market projects around the world, says the social benefits of markets must be considered equally alongside their role as food distribution centers. The convergence of urban and rural, rich and poor, producer and diner leads to relationships that give people a feeling of connection, he says. But years ago, “we broke, for the most part, with the tradition of shopping in public markets,” says O’Neil, who consulted with the Boston Public Market Association. “That tradition was centuries old. There was no day when that started going downhill. The slow demise of the public market systems did go down, and we are out of practice.”
- No doubt weighing on the minds of Boston's public market proponents is the fairly recent demise of the Portland Public Market in Maine. The New York Times reported in 2007 that vendors were paying less than $20 per square foot in a market that cost nonprofit The Libra Foundation $75 per square foot to maintain. Ultimately, they could not get the market to a break-even point and were forced to sell, sending 28 vendors scrambling to find another location to sell their goods. It's a cautionary tale about the difficulty for private entities alone (especially nonprofits) to make the economics of public markets work. With the commonwealth of Massachusetts only able to promise $4 million of the $10 million needed to open the market, Wiest says the future of the market depends on the association’s ability to raise the remainder of the capital. He acknowledges that with the fundraising needs and amount of renovations necessary to build out Parcel 7, 2013 is probably a more realistic target for beginning the work. Plus, he says, when you’re depending on public funding and management, there are always higher priorities for officials than moving forward on a public market.
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Boston's Quincy Market, pictured circa the mid-1800s.
Parcel 7, behind the Rose Kennedy Greenway.
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