Center City Partners Piggy
Cribbing from a popular nursery rhyme, Charlotte Center City Partners is going to market, hitting taxpayers up for a cool million dollars along the way and a chance to cry wee, wee, wee, all the way home.
Or at least to the former site of Reid’s Fine Foods on Seventh Street, alongside the tracks of the vaunted Lynx light-rail line, which is where the uptown cheerleading group wants to help launch a new farmer’s market.
Pitching the venture as an engine for economic development, Center City Partners honcho Michael Smith told councilmembers Monday night that an uptown farmer’s market has the potential to create upwards of 40 new small businesses and 100 jobs within five years. But to get the market off the ground would require up to a $1 million grant, Smith said, and asked councilmembers to approve the largess before the end of the month. Center City’s timeline has construction starting as early as December, with an eye toward opening next spring.
The million-dollar grant money would likely be pulled from the city’s economic development piggybank, if councilmembers approve the request. While most seemed receptive to the idea, they sent the issue the council’s economic development committee for further review. Typically, that means the committee will gnaw on whatever proposal it’s studying before giving the green light for full council approval. There’s little reason to suspect this latest grab for taxpayer money will turn out any different.
The market idea received tepid pushback Monday night from a few councilmembers. Warren Cooksey, a Republican, fretted that the proposed location – at about 13,500 square feet – wouldn’t be big enough to attract a significant amount of traffic. Councilmember Michael Barnes, a Democrat, thought other farmer’s markets scattered throughout the city should also have a shot at receiving a slice of any subsidy grant.
Smith said exploring the option of extending grant funding had merit, but that Center City Partners thought an uptown market has the best potential to make existing markets “healthier.”
The uptown market, he said, would be a permanent, year-round, indoor/outdoor facility that promoted “multi-cultural vendor diversity.” It would be operated as a non-profit group separate from Center City Partners, with its own board of directors, a full-time marketing director and assistant marketing director, and three part-time employees.
“We don’t want this to be considered the work of Center City Partners,” Smith said. “This is a work of passion.”
Smith acknowledged that the leases paid by the initial tenants of the market likely would not pay for its early-stage operating costs, but said a five-year partnership reached with Carolina Medical Centers would cover any gaps.
Center City Partners has been studying the prospect of an uptown farmer’s market for 15 years, Smith said, rejecting a location on Fifth Street as recently as 2009.
The Seventh Street spot would prove ideal, Smith said, not only because of its close proximity to the light-rail line (what he called “part of the magic”), but also because the former site of Reid’s Fine Food would come with equipment like coolers and display cases already in place.
“It’s like being the second owner of a golf course,” Smith said.
The $1-million gift from taxpayers, he explained, is needed to transform the existing space into the indoor/outdoor facility that’s envisioned to connect to the planned urban park in uptown’s First Ward.
UPDATE: Center City Partner’s $300k-per-year honcho, Michael Smith, has asked for a 30 to 45-day delay before the farmer’s market proposal is sent to the council’s economic development committee for review. Smith also wants people to start calling it a “public market,” instead of a farmer’s market. Yes, now that $1 million grant makes so much more sense.
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