Downtown Phoenix Public Market

She’s proud of the 68 items she cans fresh in her new commercial kitchen in South Phoenix, especially since she grew up in New York and once thought that “everything grew in back of a grocery store.” But then she met a farmer named Joe, and with him came a mother-in-law who canned all summer and taught Earnestine everything there is to know, and that’s how she now helps support her family.

From the very first February morning in 2005 when the Downtown Phoenix Public Market opened, 74-year-old Ernie has been here.

“That first day was murder,” she remembers. “It was raining, and this parking lot was a big mud puddle. But people came in the rain, and I remember thinking, ‘You people are nuttier than we are,’ but that was our very best day for sales.” She remembers calling her husband, who had products at another market, and telling him how she was selling out of everything.

Nobody was more amazed than Ernie. For years, the conventional wisdom said a farmers’ market in Phoenix wouldn’t fly. There was no demand for it, folks liked their supermarkets and buying fresh from the grower was just too much work.

I love it when conventional wisdom is wrong, and on this Saturday, a couple hours before the market opens, as people are setting up and getting ready, it’s great to hear the stories of people who knew this could be a hit.

Like Rhonda McDonald and Kathy Van Derworp, who show up early every Saturday so their coffee is ready by 6 a.m. as vendors begin their set up. Some make a beeline for the delicious coffee before they unload a single crate.

During the week, Rhonda is a bookkeeper and Kathy is an occupational therapist, and this might seem a strange way to spend their precious Saturday mornings. But they say, in unison, “we just love this,” adding that they’re proud of the coffees and teas they sell, both to consume at the market and to take home. “We serve honey from the Queen Creek guy; we help each other out,” Rhonda says.

Around them, a couple of eager beavers are setting up the temporary white tents that provide shade and definition to the market, which sits on two large parking lots at Central Avenue and McKinley Street, two blocks south of Roosevelt Street and across from the Westward Ho.

Down the way, Ann Hackett sells her handmade jewelry. She’s really an accountant and this is her hobby, but she’d like to see it become a full-time gig. The sales, so far, are promising.
Cathy Taylor also sits nearby – she’s a ceramist who learned her art in a Phoenix College class and now experiments with fusing ceramics and glass.

The biggest crafts booth belongs to Helen Sands, a woman who reminds me of a quintessential grandma and whose hand-crocheted dishtowels and painted potholders remind me of Catholic nuns from years ago – good thing, too, because Helen learned all of this while at an all-girls academy in Pennsylvania, where the nuns thought it was good for the soul to learn hand skills.

One Windmill Farm from Queen Creek is represented here by John Scott, who has farmed that land for 30 years. He brings enough fruits and vegetables to fill 11 tables worth of produce picked within the past 24 hours. Five families eat because John farms 10 acres in Queen Creek and another 160 acres in Willcox and sells his produce at three different farmers’ markets. He usually mans the one Downtown, where he gets to know the customers.

The other major vegetable stand is from Maya’s Farm, a new farm planted and tended to by Maya Dailey in South Phoenix. Maya used to be in the restaurant business in Santa Fe, but 18 months ago, she started “living her dream” by growing organic flowers, herbs and specialty vegetables. She comes to these roots naturally – she’s a third-generation Spanish-Arizonan whose family started farming in Globe decades ago and still operates Caballero Farms.

Maya remembers when the market’s founder and director, Cynthia Gentry, first approached her about joining the Downtown market. “I told Cindy, ‘I’m so small,’ and she told me, ‘that’s the kind of person we want,’ and I’ve grown as the market has grown. This market is fantastic – it has a heart. Its roots are in supporting local agriculture, the hungry and building a community in the Downtown area. I’m not leaving this market. Cindy is part of the reason we’re all sticking it out – we have unity and strength through her.”
And although every word from this point on will make her blush, Cindy Gentry is the spirit that is finally giving Phoenix a farmers’ market worthy of a big city. And she is the reason 55 farmers, artists and vendors show up every Saturday morning, rain or shine, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

I’M A MIDWEST GIRL, SO I KNOW the value of fresh produce and farmers’ markets. So Phoenix was one big disappointment in the market category when I came here more than 30 years ago. Over the years, I was a faithful customer at the feeble attempts at markets – one in Patriot’s Square, another in the Lath House – but they never measured up.

When I learned that this small, soft-spoken woman named Cindy Gentry had gotten some powerful Downtown players interested in a farmers’ market, I was pretty impressed. You can get things done in Downtown Phoenix if you’ve got the support of the Downtown Phoenix Partnership and the Phoenix Community Alliance. And she did. She also lined up assistance from Arizona State University, the Nina Pulliam Foundation, the City of Phoenix Downtown Development Office, Phoenix Revitalization, and Native American Connections. It certainly didn’t hurt that Cindy had spent 15-and-a-half years with the Association of Food Banks, including 10 with the Arizona Gleaning Project, an effort that puts leftover produce from the fields into local food banks.

“One in seven people in Arizona – one in four children – don’t have enough to eat,” she tells me. “We’ve got food producers who can’t make a living. But we need to move beyond emergency food needs. We need to show that food can be an economic development tool. To me, a farmers’ market is an opportunity to support farms and for people to eat well.”

Four years ago, Cindy started researching the need for a Downtown market. She wrote to Jerry Colangelo, the premier Downtown businessman at the time, and he connected her with the Downtown Phoenix Partnership. Its director, Brian Kearney, told her to come back with a business plan. But Cindy had never written a business plan and had no idea how to proceed. Still, she sketched out her vision for what a market would look like and handed it to Kearney, who hasn’t turned his back on her yet.

Enter the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which Cindy remembers didn’t believe there was a need for a Downtown market but still coughed up $25,000 for a feasibility study in the summer of 2003. She worked with ASU graduate students to survey producers, brokers and consumers and found there were two big “wants” on everyone’s list: locally grown foods and accessible parking.

“Farmers’ markets were booming around the country and they had the cache of a community gathering spot,” Cindy says. “They were safe, comfortable and beautiful, and in that environment, you open your wallet because you want to take that vibe home with you.”

But all that sounds like a pipe dream when you don’t have any place to put your market. In came the Phoenix Community Alliance. Jo Marie McDonald went to her membership and asked if anybody had a spare building to offer, and developer Kurt Schneider stepped up. He had this land along Central Avenue, two long blocks that mainly provided parking for the bars across the street. He didn’t plan to do anything with the land for a while and offered to lease it to the market.

The agriculture department came up with another $35,000 grant to set up the market, and everybody pitched in, including a $170,000 grant from the Gila River Indian Community to provide shade and misters. And that’s how it happened that 14 vendors and about 75 shoppers showed up on that rainy Saturday to give this Downtown market a go.

I’ve been going to the market most Saturdays since. On the first anniversary, they served cake to celebrate and, by the end of that year, could brag that sales were up 40 percent from the first year. This year, sales already are at least 20 percent ahead of last year, and I’ve noticed it’s getting more crowded every Saturday.

I can now choose from as many as 55 vendors on any given Saturday, and here’s a heads up – don’t come late if you want fresh bread. And starting soon, we’ve got an entirely new reason to go to the market.

SITTING NEXT TO THE 13,000-square-foot parking lot that is home to the Downtown Phoenix Public Market is a 4,000-square-foot brick building that will become part of the market. Again, this is thanks to Kurt Schneider.

The move indoors was supposed to happen this month, but a delay with the city permit process has pushed back the expected opening date to December, Cindy says. When it does finally open, the Market Store, which will be open every day but Monday, will offer coffee, pastries, prepared meals, wine and beer, groceries, locally raised meat, hard and soft cheese, dairy, fish, bread, dried grains and nuts, flowers and chocolate.

I’m predicting right now it’s going to be a favorite hangout of the Downtown crowd, including the ASU students. I know it’s going to be on my shopping list.

And if you think that’s as far as Cindy wants to go, well, you don’t know Cindy.
“In the next six years, I’d like to see 40,000 square feet of space for our market, 25,000 indoors and 15,000 outdoors,” she says. “I’d like us to be open seven days a week for lots of hours. I’d like to see a kitchen store [don’t forget that tony Sur La Table got its start at Pike’s Market in Seattle], I’d like a bakery on the site. I’d like to connect with food banks.

“We want this to be a melting pot and to celebrate our diversity. I like that there are people of many different colors and backgrounds at our market and they all seem to blend together.”

And I like that each Saturday, the market chef, Elizabeth Milburn, cooks up a storm. She goes around collecting items from the various booths and then cooks delicious food, giving it out for free. Elizabeth is a personal chef and uses this as a way to advertise her business, Leave It To Elizabeth.

I like that Pat Howard comes in all the way from Fountain Hills with her handmade soap, lotions and body butter, which her grandmother taught her to make.
I like that the local restaurant, Raimonds, brings its fabulous Italian food.
I like that I can buy clothing or photographs or brass wind chimes at this market.
I like that Jan Bolten makes such delicious baked goods.

And I like that I’ve gotten to know Ernie and her great story. Did I mention she sells her Asian cucumbers exclusively to Pizzeria Bianco? Could that be one reason it’s considered the best pizza parlor in the nation?
“I promised Cindy I’d be here, and I’ll be here as long as this market is here,” Ernie says.

I know exactly how she feels.