SNOHOMISH — The weekly Thursday afternoon Snohomish Farmers Market is moving back to Cedar and Pearl as soon as this week.
An arrangement was made where the city will hold off renting the Carnegie Building on Thursdays through market season in trade for a city booth, city administrator Heather Thomas said.
Farmers market manager Sarah Dylan Jensen is excited to come back. One, it opens up more space for more vendors. Two, the cantered roads posed flooding difficulties when it rained, Dylan Jensen said in a comment on social media.
Reverting to Cedar and Pearl places the market in front of less brick-and-mortar businesses. Its current spot removes up to 80 parking spaces from downtown.
“We’re SO excited! It can’t happen soon enough,” Dylan Jensen said in an email.
The City Council will be asked to approve the revised footprint this week after press time.
The market ended up at Union and Glen avenues as an option offered by the city after city officials wouldn’t allow the market to continue blocking the entrance to the Carnegie on Thursday afternoons; the city communicated this to the market as early as 2021.
The renewed Carnegie began being rented out for money starting April 2021.
The market operated at Cedar and First for about 15 years. When discussing alternative locations earlier this year, in addition to Union and Glen, the city offered an alternative space on the unpaved grass at Averill Field and also had offered a much smaller footprint for the market, away from the Carnegie.
The 2020 market happened in Stocker Farms’ parking lot, but was only a one-year special arrangement to give a wide space between vendors during the coronavirus pandemic. The site lacks shade from the sun and lacks ADA accessibility.
