From June through December, Keith Stocker and his family sell everything from strawberries to Christmas trees from their cozy, roadside red barn near Snohomish.
What the Stockers cannot grow, but still want to sell — apples, potatoes, avocadoes, and more — they purchase from as local a source as they can.
“Our goal is to keep people from visiting their local grocery store,” Stocker said. “We want to be in contact with our customers. We want to be authentic.”
Stocker also wants to be profitable.
Walk-up customers pay Stocker about three times as much as grocery stores do, he said.
It’s no wonder Stocker and a growing chorus of farmers and politicians believe a local, year-round farmer’s market could clear up farming’s cloudy future in Snohomish County.
Increasingly, those same farmers and officials are looking to Edmonds as a potential home.
A developer interested in turning Edmonds ‘waterfront’ redevelopment site into a year-round market has met repeatedly with officials from Edmonds and Snohomish County in the last six weeks.
The talks are still in their infancy, officials said, but they have promise.
With its many transit options and its wealthy tax base, Edmonds seems like a natural fit, said county councilmember Mike Cooper, an early proponent of the plan.
John Roney, the would-be developer, agrees.
Roney founded a company, Roney AgriVentures LLC, and started exploring the possibility of a local market in August 2007, he said. Roney spent the previous four years promoting agriculture as a county employee.
Roney’s company has performed preliminary design and economic analyses on the year-round market concept, he said.
Similar markets are usually open three- to four-days a week during the summer, and two- to three-days a week during the winter, officials said. Summer sales focus on foods and produce, while the winter sees more craft and art sales.
Edmonds isn’t the only site that has been considered. Two other locations were studied and eliminated. Those include the Maltby area, which was a little too far from easy transit, and a former landfill near Cathcart Way in Snohomish, Roney said.
“It is too premature to say ‘We’re coming to Edmonds,’” Roney said. “It is a very attractive place and a wonderful community, but beyond that there isn’t really anything yet.
“There is still a lot up in the air,” he said. “There is still going to be a lot of vetting.”
That doesn’t mean there isn’t promise, he said.
Roney has met with investors and with Port of Edmonds director Chris Keuss. He hopes to meet soon with Edmonds developers Bob Gregg, who owns the old Skipper’s site, and Al Dykes, who manages the Edmonds Shopping Center’s Antique Mall site.
Calgary’s example
Snohomish County officials are drawing inspiration for their plan from Calgary, Alberta.
A year-round market recently opened in a former military hangar, and it now sells tens of millions of dollars of local products every year, said Councilmember Cooper, who toured the market with fellow County Councilmember Dave Sommers last year.
The success in Calgary proves farmers’ markets can be economic development drivers for local communities, as well as for farmers, Cooper said.
Roney and Stocker have also toured the Calgary market.
One of the lessons of Calgary is that an Edmonds market would probably need to draw products from outside Snohomish County, Cooper said.
“We are probably not going to have enough meat products and produce to have a market of significant size,” he said. “It would have to be a regional effort.”
Shopping local
Edmonds’ Summer Market, which crowds to downtown streets each Saturday from July through early October, has about 125 vendors making it one the region’s largest, said market manager Neil Landaas.
Landaas even turns away some would-be sellers, which might indicate Edmonds could support something larger, he said.
“The crowds are good. The customers just keep coming,” Landaas said. “I think the demand now for locally grown produce is greater than the supply.”
That doesn’t mean Landaas is ready to fully endorse a year-round market in Edmonds. He’s concerned about rental costs for farmers, and the possibility of a winter “flea market” that might not sell much food at all.
The farmers aren’t asking for a fancy new space, either. The most the farmers need is a roof for shelter from both rain and the hot August sun.
Still, he conceded, there is something appealing about selling local products more frequently.
“I think there is some way you could make a year-round market work,” he said. “The bottom line speaks.”
Reporter Chris Fyall: 425-673-6525 or cfyall@heraldnet.com
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