St. Norbert market canopies to remain for opening day

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This article was published 16/05/2017 (3379 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Vendors and shoppers at the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market will have to wait a little longer for a four-seasons canopy.

The market (3514 Pembina Hwy.) officially opens on May 20, and despite hopes of bringing the new venue to life for opening day, executive director Marilyn Firth said acquiring permits has delayed the build.

“It will go up at some point during the season,” Firth said. “We’re not quite sure when yet — we’re still working through the permitting process.”

“There were more details to the permitting process than we realized, and we’re just having to work through those details. I think it’s the standard process, it’s just taking a little longer than we anticipated,” she said.

Firth said the delay won’t affect the May 20 opening and they were prepared to go forward without the new structure.

“Our normal canopy covers are going up and all the vendors know that they just go to their regular spots as they had in previous years.”

Plans for the new $470,000 canopy were first presented to the community in March. The four-season canvas structure will have approximately the same footprint as the current canopies at 11,700 square-feet.

The market received a $235,000 grant from the federal government through the Canada 150 program and $75,000 from the City of Winnipeg to help pay for the structure.

Firth said interruptions at the market should be minimal if the new canopy goes up this summer. She hopes to know “fairly soon” when the build can commence.

“When it’s time for the canopy to go in it doesn’t take very long to put up because it’s a pre-constructed structure,” Firth said. “We may be able to do that mid-season, we’re just waiting to see what the timing looks like.”

The plan is to use the south end of the market grounds and move vendors in the canopy area to the parking lot in order to maintain the Saturday market schedule, Firth said.

“We did that before when we did our grounds upgrade a couple of years ago,” she explained. “We moved the entire market onto the parking lot and over to the south side of the market.”

About 100 vendors will be on hand for opening day, and though not all produce is ready to go, Firth said some growers have started using greenhouses, expanding the early vegetable offerings.

“That’s a great number of vendors,” Firth said. “It’s about the same as we had last year.”

May 20 is also World Fiddle Day and to celebrate the market has hired the Southglen Fiddlers and the Norman Chief Memorial Dancers to perform.

As for this year’s programming, Firth said the market will once again host its Canada Day celebration, and the Farmers’ Festival: Homeskills for the 21st Century workshop — a new addition to last year’s offerings — will return.

“We’re going to run the exact same events as last year, because we’re having the new canopy coming in we didn’t want to expand that type of project while we’re busy,” she said.

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