Geneva Green Market on the move
Don’t look for the Geneva Green Market down by the river this year. It had to move.
The Thursday-morning market, which features local and organic produce, meats, cheeses and other products, will meet at Sixth and State streets, near the Geneva Ace Hardware store.
The city council last week gave permission for several of the vendors to set up on a parkway on the west side of Sixth, as well as in the parking lot in front of the Ace.
The market starts Thursday, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“This may not be the perfect compromise, but everyone tried their hardest,” said Alderman Chuck Brown said of the new site.
The city decided last year the market had to move because of concerns commercial activity was not allowed on the state-owned lot. The Illinois Department of Transportation had allowed parking at the RiverPark parking lot where the market has met since it started in 2007.
Ellen Divita, the city’s economic development director, said she doesn’t know why the market was initially allowed to use the lot; the market began before Divita was hired.
When the city sought a licensee last fall to run a farmers market, it stated the market could be held across River Lane in a lot on the northwest corner of River and Hamilton Street. The city was also “open,” Divita said, to proposals to run a market in other locations and on other days, including using the Third Street lot that the for-profit French Market uses on Sundays. The request-for-quotes also specified such a market could not be held on Saturdays or Sundays, and that the market organizer had to be a not-for-profit organization.
Connie Weaver, the Geneva Green Market organizer, said none of her vendors wanted to use the lot at River and Hamilton, because there is no shade. The RiverPark lot had trees on several edges. She praised the owners of the hardware store for allowing the market to move there.
Geneva Green Market NFP also runs an indoor market in the winter.
The Geneva market isn’t the only one that has changed locations. The Batavia Farmers Market moved across the Fox River, to the city’s newly revamped North River Street.