Vendors express concern over the city’s handling of moving the most popular market in town due to risk of roof collapse

 

Kelsey Rideout

If there’s one thing that residents of Guelph are unanimously proud of, it has got to be our bustling local market that takes place every week.  For many students,

 Saturday morning is routinely slated for market time, and no exam schedule could ever get in the way. But for at least the next 10 weeks, the building of the Guelph Farmers’ Market will be closed in order to make repairs to its roof. After scrambling to find a new location, the City has confirmed the whereabouts of the market’s new foster home.  Starting this Saturday, market-lovers will have to go to the lobby of City Hall and the Wilson Street parking lots in order to pick out their favourite local goodies.

Just before the City announced the new location of the market, I caught up with Mari-Claire Watkins from Natural Balance Wellness, who has been selling natural soap and skin products every Saturday for eight years. Watkins expressed frustrations over communications between the City and the vendors.

“Well I think the biggest piece is that nothing’s clear right now…It’s not clear that the building’s structural integrity, no one knows how structurally integral it is…It’s more endless unanswered questions being met with a lack of communication from the City. This is causing angst, frustration, anger and uncertainty amongst all the vendors. The information is changing daily.”

Watkins was unsure as to why the city was not providing the vendors and the public with enough facts about the actual conditions of the market’s roof.

“We’ve been advised by the city that the roof is not able to support its own load, but the city hasn’t produced any documents to show us this,” said Watkins. “They just told us that this was their word. They have not named the engineering firm that did the analysis. They’ve not named the engineer. And they’ve not released or published to any of the vendors, the information. My position is that I’m in the dark about what the true facts are.”

Executive Director of Operations and Transit, Derek McCaughan, believed to have communicated as best as possible with all affected parties. He acknowledged the frustrations in having to move the market but could not think of another option given the conditions of the building.
           

“Well we’ve received an assessment of the building from a structural engineer,” said McCaughan. “The assessment is that the roof structure would have difficulty sustaining snow load whatsoever. That means there’s a chance that the roof would collapse or fail in some way. Because of that we need to address it and we’re not going to allow people into the building.”

McCaughan hopes that the Farmers’ Market will be up and running shortly after the New Year.

“For the building itself, we are in the process of hiring a contractor to affect repairs. We’ll know who that is on the 15^th of December and it will take probably until the end of January to get the repairs done, and then everyone can go back to the market.”

While the city has managed to move the market, it has not been able to accommodate all vendors. Those in need of hot and cold water will not be able to sell their products in the new location, including approximately a dozen meat vendors. For many vendors, the weekends around the holiday season are crucial to their business sales. Watkins remains unsatisfied with the city’s efforts.

“The man that said that they would not be able to get a second opinion [on the roof] isn’t going to lose his paycheck on Saturday,” said Watkins. “That’s important. It’s highlighting the fact that even if he thinks he’s done everything that he could and should have done, truly he hasn’t. But he may not be willing to acknowledge that.”

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