Location, utility costs, pandemic likely forcing Edmonton Downtown Farmers Market to close – Edmonton

The Edmonton Downtown Farmers Market will likely have to fold and declare bankruptcy.

The market's manager said the last market day could be Jan. 28.

The board of directors for the market association has called a special meeting for all members on Jan. 27 “to consider the immediate future and to consider the board's recommendation to cease operating, to vacate the building and file for bankruptcy,” Elaine Doucette told Global News on Friday.

“We've been in this current location for over four years. The move that we did from 104th Street to this building coincided with the global (COVID-19) pandemic. We had … east downtown recovery issues.

“We didn't really get the vibrancy in this location that we needed.”

When the market moved from 104th Street to the historic Army & Navy building at 103rd Avenue and  97th Street in 2020, it had 250 vendors, Doucette said. Now it has just 60.

“We saw a big — huge — loss in our vendor base, which is our means of income, and it continues to shrink to the point where we cannot sustain this location,” she said.

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Edmonton Downtown Farmers Market inches closer to moving date

The market is open year-round Saturdays and Sundays.

“This current building is very high in utilities so it's really hit us. We just haven't made it back from that previous move and break with the pandemic,” Doucette said.

The market took a CEBA loan but paid it back. Now, it's just having trouble with other debt — namely the infrastructure fees and utilities.

The market's lease ends in April 2024, Doucette said. The landlord is the city, which is leasing it from a private corporation. The market board of directors has been working with both.

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Edmonton's downtown market moving back to 104 Street

In June 2023, the market's board said it could no longer afford the operating costs of the old Army & Navy building and would have to move.

“They've exhausted all options,” Doucette said. “They've been working on it for years. There is potential for more loans, but as a non-profit, to take out even more debt at this point would be against bylaw unless we voted it out, so we're just going to fold.”

The board is hopeful someone else might find a way to keep the downtown market tradition going.

“We are looking forward to potentially another entity taking over,” Doucette said. “As this entity, we got too far in the hole with the unsustainable choice of moving to this location, the building, the pandemic.

“The location, the cost of this old building and the global pandemic just really crushed us.”

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Supporting Alberta businesses at the Old Strathcona Farmers' Market

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