Click here for up to date information about the Mountlake Terrace Farmer’s Market

It is an exciting time to live in Mountlake Terrace as the city’s Town Center vision is moving towards becoming a reality. There are several properties in the development process, the old city hall is about to be demolished and now plans for a farmer’s market in the Town Center are moving forward. At Thursday night’s city council meeting, the Mountlake Terrace Business Assocociation, along with city staff, presented a proposal for a farmer’s market in Mountlake Terrace. The presentation identified the market concepts and identified some requests for the city council to consider. The MTBA has been hard at work over the 4 months researching and preparing this proposal.

The proposed location of the market (see map below) is in the 58th Ave W right of way south of the intersection with 232nd St SW. This is directly in front of the old city hall (and location of future city hall), just north of the library. During Tour de Terrace, vendors set up on 224th St but the site on 58th was detemined to be better for the farmers market because of the proximity to other Town Center businesses and access to restrooms. The restrooms in the library would likely be used by vendors.

The plan would be to have somewhere around 20-40 vendors selling produce, flowers and other items you would generally find at a farmer’s market. The preliminary time slot for the market is set to be Thursday afternoons between 2 pm and 8 pm. The main reason for this time slot is to coordinate with other area farmer’s markets so the the MLT is not happening simultaneously as others. Another reason given to have it on a week day is because they hope people parking at the transit center might stop by the market on their way home from work.

The MTBA has said that they would hire the same market manager that manages the Lake Forest Park, Crossroads, Kirkland and Woodinville markets. The market manager is paid an annual fee, a per-event fee (they are on-site for every market) and a % profit fee. A benefit of hiring this particular person is that they already work with many vendors that may have interest in the MLT market.

A couple more items of note about the market are that Calvary Fellowship has agreed to allow market parking on their property and the city will consider reducing the business license fees for vendors for the first year of the market as well as allowing additional signage that the city signage code may not necessarily allow.

We’ll keep you update as plans move forward and hopefully sometime in the neat future a farmer’s market in Mountlake Terrace be be a reality.
View Proposed Mountlake Terrace Farmer’s Market Location in a larger map

[image courtesy lachshand]