For the first time in its history, the Vale Avenue Farmers Market won't go dark for the winter. A new six-Saturday pop-up season, backed by a $22,000 Chamber of Commerce grant, will keep about eighteen vendors selling on the avenue through the weeks leading up to the holidays.
The Vale Avenue Farmers Market will run a six-Saturday holiday pop-up season this year, extending its usual spring-through-fall schedule into the weeks leading up to the holidays for the first time in its history. Organizers say the addition is meant to keep downtown foot traffic steady through the slower months rather than let the market go dark until spring.
Market director Colleen Bhatt said the pop-up season will run at roughly half the scale of the market’s summer peak, with about eighteen vendors compared to the forty-plus stalls that line Vale Avenue on a July Saturday. She said the market secured a $22,000 grant from the Bellwater Chamber of Commerce to cover heated tents, portable lighting and a small stage for weekend performances.
A different mix of vendors
“Nobody wants to stand outside selling tomatoes in the cold, and nobody’s buying them anyway,” Bhatt said. “So the pop-up season leans into what people actually want this time of year: wreaths, root vegetables, baked goods, gifts made by people you can shake hands with.” She said five vendors new to the market this year specialize in holiday-specific goods, including a wreath maker from outside West Bellwater and a small-batch preserves seller who previously sold only online.
Not every regular market vendor is participating. Of the market’s roughly forty warm-weather vendors, twenty-two applied for pop-up season slots, and four were turned away for lack of space, a decision Bhatt said was the hardest part of planning the new season. “I’d rather have had complaints about the cold than complaints about who got left out,” she said. “We got both anyway.”
One of those turned away, longtime honey vendor Frank Delisle, said he was frustrated but understood the space constraints. “Six Saturdays isn’t much room to fit everybody who wants in,” Delisle said. “I’ll be back in the spring. I just wish there’d been more notice so I could plan around it.” Bhatt said the market intends to expand pop-up season capacity next year if this winter’s turnout justifies it.
Downtown can’t just be a summer destination if we want these businesses to survive year-round. The market going quiet for five months was leaving money on the table and foot traffic off the sidewalk.
Patricia Yoon, City Council Member, District 1
City Hall and the Chamber both have a stake
City Council Member Patricia Yoon, who represents the Downtown Core district that includes Vale Avenue, has pushed for storefront-vacancy reforms and said the pop-up season fits into that broader effort to keep the corridor active outside peak tourist months. She said she lobbied the Chamber of Commerce directly to help fund the tents and lighting after market organizers first raised the idea with her office roughly eight months ago.
Theresa Nakamura, executive director of the Chamber, confirmed the $22,000 grant and said it was among the larger single commitments the organization has made to a Vale Avenue event. “Every dollar we put into keeping people walking down Vale Avenue in the cold comes back to us through the storefronts along that street,” Nakamura said. “The bookstore, the café, the diners. It’s not charity. It’s arithmetic.”
Nakamura pointed to Ledger & Leaf Books, which recently added a café counter to boost slow-season revenue, as an example of a neighboring Vale Avenue business making a similar bet on staying relevant through the colder months. “Everybody on that block is trying to solve the same problem,” she said. “The market going quiet was part of that problem. Now it’s part of the solution.”
Not everyone is convinced the pop-up season will draw the same crowds as summer. Vendor Marisol Kwan, who has sold cut flowers at the market for four seasons, said she is skeptical shoppers will brave the cold in the same numbers, even with heated tents. “Flowers are a hard sell to begin with when it’s cold enough to see your breath,” Kwan said. “I signed up because I don’t want to disappear from people’s Saturday routine for five months, not because I expect to sell like it’s July.”
- Six Saturdays, running through the weeks leading up to the holidays
- About eighteen vendors, roughly half the market’s peak-season count
- Heated tents, string lighting and a small performance stage funded by a $22,000 Chamber of Commerce grant
Bhatt said she is treating the first pop-up season as a pilot and will survey both vendors and shoppers after the final Saturday to decide whether to expand it next year. “If people show up, we’ll have real numbers to bring back to the Chamber and the council for a bigger version,” she said. “If they don’t, at least we’ll know before we’ve built something permanent around it.” For now, she said, her main goal is simple: keep Vale Avenue from feeling empty on a Saturday morning, no matter the temperature.