Oak Park Farmers' Market getting ready to open 25th season

By ERIC LINDEN

The Oak Park Farmers' Market will be celebrating its 25th season in
June--either at its traditional Lake-Elmwood church parking lot location
or at a mystery site to be decided.

Kelly Coppel, the Oak park resident hired in January to be the new
manager of the market, said the commission will finalize plans for the
quarter-century season at a meeting this Tuesday, April 18. Further, she
confirmed that Assistant Village Manager M. Ray Wiggins and Village
Attorney Raymond Heise currently are meeting with the attorney for
Pilgrim to finalize a new lease to hold the market at its usual location
at the northwest corner of Elmwood Avenue and Lake Street.

Wiggins said talks with the church have been going on for "about three
weeks," but he said the Farmers' Market's location would not be
determined until after a May 1 recommendation to the village board,
which will make the final decision.

Nevertheless, the 2000 market season is to be held at the same dates as
always, from the first Saturday in June to the last Saturday in
October--which means June 3 through Oct. 28 this year. The market
vendors each week sell fruits, vegetables, plants, dried flowers, honey,
t-shirts, homemade cheeses and other products. Market organizers also
offer special activities throughout the season.

This year, there will be free strawberries and shortcake on opening day,
occasional food demonstrations, bake-sale fundraisers by Oak Park
not-for-profit organizations, a corn roast for the public in August,
serving of stone soup on closing day and other traditional market
features as part of the market's 2000 season, said Coppel, an Oak Park
resident for two-and-a-half years. Specific additional activities to
market the Farmers' Market's 25th season are to be decided Tuesday by
the Farmers' Market Commission, a volunteer panel of Oak Park residents
named by the village board to oversee policy for the market.

In addition to higher fees for vendors who sell their products at the
Farmers' Market, one other feature of the market will change this year.
Nancy Ricketts, the Oak Park resident who had been market manager for 23
of the market's years will not be returning.

"Nancy Ricketts was responsible for much of the success of the market,"
Coppel said. "The growers will miss her; the customers will miss her;
everybody will miss her."

Ricketts had a serious operation last year but served out the 1999
market season as manager. Then Ricketts was told by village hall
officials that she could not return to the position. Ricketts' Farmers'
Market post was a part-time job that was separate from her full-time
work as an inspector with village government's Code Department. Village
hall officials last year ruled that the arrangement amounted to
"double-dipping," or one person filling two public jobs, and a new
market manager was sought.

Enter Coppel. She had been working for 13 years in marketing and
advertising as an account supervisor for a Chicago advertising firm.
Coppel said she left the firm because she was "traveling a ton" and
because she planned to be married. Coppel said she "kept my eyes open"
for  a local post that interested her and saw the advertisement for a
new market manager last September and applied. She was approved as
market manager by the village board on Jan. 18.

"It's very local, and I got really lucky," Coppel said of the market
manager job.

The market's affairs are run by an 11-member commission that as of now
is two members short of a full complement. The commission currently is
chaired by Carole Smith and includes members Naomi Law, Kris Cihlar,
Nancy York-Erwin, John Herringer, Karen Mansfield, Tamara Hendricks, Jan
Barrick and Elaine Ricketts, who is no relation to Nancy Ricketts. The
commission is aided in its work by Coppel; assistant market manager
Margaret Will, who will be returning this season; Wiggins, representing
village government's interests; Eric Sacks of the Citizen Involvement
Commission, another volunteer village hall panel and one that works to
attract residents serve on commissions; and Ron Fischer, another Oak
Park resident who is best known as the "Honey Man" at the Farmers'
Market and who is the liaison to the market's growers and vendors.

Under Oak Park Farmers' Market rules, those who sell at the market must
grow their own produce. They pay rent for weekly spaces in the parking
lot owned by and adjacent to Pilgrim Congregational Church, 460 Lake St.
Market officials currently and over the years take great care to assure
that market vendors truly are the growers of their wares. In a famous
1980s case that came to be known as the "cauliflower caper," a past
market commission took action to expel a vendor who was discovered to
have been purchasing that vegetable from the South Water Market in
Chicago and selling it at the Oak Park market. Over his objections and
after a court case, that vendor was banned from the Oak Park market.

Separate from the market and its commission, Pilgrim Church owns
doughnut-making equipment in its basement and runs the weekly sale of
doughnuts at the market. Doughnuts made on the church's equipment are
sold each Saturday to market customers, and the doughnuts are made
either by church members or by volunteers from selected local
not-for-profit organizations, who split the doughnut sale proceeds as
fund-raisers for their organizations.

Coppel said she has received no calls from residents during her few
months as market manager. That would mean no feedback from residents who
praise the market or from the few neighbors of the Pilgrim site who
have, in recent years, issued public complaints about the noise, traffic
and other disturbances that the Oak Park residents say is caused by the
market early on Saturday mornings.

In part due to those complaints from market neighbors, several rules
were put in place to alleviate the concerns. For instance, traffic and
parking rules have been more strictly enforced and growers/vendors are
not allowed to start setting up their sales spaces until 6 p.m., with no
sales going on until 7 p.m.

With those rules, customers have been asked not to appear to buy produce
at the market until 7 a.m. The Farmers' Market technically is to close
at 2 p.m. on the Saturdays it operates, but growers traditionally run
out of produce long before that.

"I think people have been very impressed by the attention given to the
(issues raised by neighbors)," Coppel said.

Coppel said she has received, however, calls from 10 growers interested
in renting space at the Oak Park Farmers' Market. Not all of them had
formally applied as of Friday, but with only one grower having expressed
a desire not to return and with applications from growers not due until
Monday. It was unclear if any or how many new growers would be involved
in the coming market season. The commission also is to review the
applications and settle on the grower lineup at its meeting on Tuesday.

Also contacting Coppel, she said, have been representatives of other
towns interested in starting a farmers' market in their communities. Oak
Park began the market to foster greater interaction from citizens, and
other towns reportedly have similar goals. Those asking for information
receive a packet that answers their questions and that was developed by
Nancy Ricketts.

Coppel also wants to hear from others, specifically Oak Park
not-for-profit groups that would like bake sale space during the 2000
market season. The Oak Park market allows two bake sales each week, and
some dates still remain for the upcoming season. Coppel can be reached
at ext. 2279 at Oak Park village hall. The number currently is 445-3340.

The Farmers' Market web site continues to publicize the Elmwood-Lake
location, and if a site change were made, it would appear that market
organizers might be left short of time to prepare properly for the new
season. "Not necessarily," said Wiggins, who declined to comment
further. He also would not discuss possible new sites or the seeming
lack of open space in Oak Park. The last time a new location for the
market was explored, an extensive study by the market commission
determined that the only adequate space was in the parking lot to the
south of village hall. But there were enough drawbacks to that location
that officials voted to remain near Pilgrim Church.