About the New Home for the Farmers’ Market
John Strow, former President of the Santa Fe Farmers' Market Institute and Richard Czoski, Executive Director of the Santa Fe Railyard Community Corporation, sign the lease for Lot H in the Railyard.
Eighty-Year Lease in the Railyard
On November 5, 2005, the Santa Fe Farmers' Market Institute signed an 80-year lease for Lot H in the Railyard, which assures that the Santa Fe community will have access to local, fresh, nutritious food in a permanent, year-round location. The Institute is now under contract with the design/build team of Cameron Construction in Santa Fe and Huitt Zollars Architects in Albuquerque to design and build a sustainable building that will meet the nation’s most rigorous green standards. For the first time in its 40-year history, the Market will have a place to set down some roots and a commercial selling space that will be available for generations of farmers to come. Construction began in August of 2007 and is scheduled to be completed by Summer 2008!
An Indoor/Outdoor Market
The new, permanent Market will have both indoor and outdoor space. The Trust for Public Land is designing and constructing the Plaza and Alameda, which are pedestrian areas just outside our permanent space. Both of these outdoor areas will accommodate vendor trucks and stalls on the major Market days, giving the Market a wonderful outdoor venue for sales. These areas will accommodate 100 vendors with trucks, so the Market will still have a completely outdoor market during good weather.
Room to Grow
Up to 150 vendors can be served at the new site. Fifty vendors can utilize the indoor space; 100 vendors, with trucks, can use the outdoor areas, creating a total of 150 spaces for vending. The average number of vendors during the peak summer season is currently around 90 to 100, and during the winter, the Market averages about 36 vendors per day, so this space will give the Market room to expand well into the future.
Community-Based Event Center
The building’s 10,000 square feet Market Hall will be an exciting and affordable community-based event center when the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market is not running, one that will be available to all of our community’s nonprofits, and especially those that focus on agriculture, land and water issues, sustainable lifestyles, environmental issues and locally-based economic development.
Green Construction
The Institute is seeking Silver LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification, a program of the US Green Building Council. All water will be harvested from the roof. Solar panels will heat the building and provide hot water. We will salvage or recycle up to 50% of our construction waste and use recycled materials in the construction, as well as local and regional materials extracted, processed or manufactured within a 500 mile radius of Santa Fe. The indoor environmental quality will be improved through the use of low emitting materials like paints, coatings, adhesives, sealants, carpets, wood and agrifiber products. Water efficient landscaping will reduce outdoor use by 50%. Ambient lighting will reduce the use of electricity during daylight hours. These and other innovations will make the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market building the first LEED certified new construction in the Railyard District, and also the first of its kind for a farmers’ market in the country.
Building Appearance
Located across the street from Site Santa Fe, the Market’s building will have a footprint of 17,530 square feet, with a total square footage of 25,321 square feet. The design is a two-story warehouse type structure (in keeping with the style of buildings found in the Railyard area).
The building will feature 5,847 square feet of restaurant space on the ground floor along with a large, open Market Hall of approximately 10,000 square feet for year-round, indoor sales for up to 50 vendors. An additional 100 vendors will be accommodated outside the building with their trucks and stalls along the “Alameda” walkway and in the “Plaza” on the north side of the building. So, the Market will still have a completely outdoor market during good weather!
The second floor will contain the offices of the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market and Institute, and have approximately 3,200 square feet remaining as lease-able office space.
