Common Greens

     Today is November 21.  Common Greens has been in business for almost a year now.  Considering the events of the last week, I had the idea that it might be a good idea to start a public blog to help keep the people who are interested in our adventures in Napa, Sonoma and Solano counties up to date. 

     For a little background, Common Greens is the company started in January 2005 by Joan Taramasso and Thalassa Skinner.  We manage farmers market.  This year we worked with four markets (Tuesday-Napa Downtown Farmers Market, Wednesday-Yountville Farmers Market, Saturday-Napa Downtown Farmers Market and Saturday-Vacaville Farmers Market).  All four markets enjoyed a measure of success.  The Napa market did the best, increasing business dramatically from 2004, which had been a bit of  a down year.  Yountville did well considering there had been NO market there in 2004 and we spent most of the year reminding people in the community that they once again had a farmers market each week.  Three weeks of rain didn't help us there, either, but we survived.

     Vacaville was another challenge.  The market managers from 2004 decided not to return, but through some miscommunication the Vacaville Downtown Business Improvement District didn't know they weren't coming back until we, Common Greens, asked if they might be interested in new management.  We were incredibly lucky in finding a fantastic local manager who really made the market work for the farmers who attended. It turned out OK in the end, but more on this later.

     Now we've managed to open a huge can of worms in the City of Sonoma.  Vendors who are currently attending the Tuesday night market, as well as some vendors who are no longer selling there, have asked us to please, please, please put in an application to run that market.  The big issue is that no one has ever put in a competing application for an event such as the farmers market.  It's different than putting in an application for a one-time unique event.  The farmers market is a weekly event.  It draws hundreds to thousands of people each week.  It's very much a local community event.  There's lots of emotion and passion running through its vendors and patrons, and obviously the current manager.

     While the phrase "nothing ventured, nothing gained" sounds a might flippant, that's pretty much where we are at the moment.  We've submitted a proposal/application to the City of Sonoma and their Plaza Use Commission.  If you're interested in reading it, we can e-mail it to you (give us a little time to re-format it so it makes sense without all the actual application pages).  You can reach us at joan@commongreens.com or lassa@commongreens.com.  One of us will be happy to send it over.

     The proposal is actually three proposals.  The first is to simply take over the market and run things exactly the way they've been run for some time, utilizing the horseshoe portion of the Plaza.  It's not our favorite idea.  The last City Council meetings we attended, it was quite clear that Public Works and others thought the Plaza was being over-taxed with use.

    The second part suggests moving the market to First Street East alongside the Plaza, maybe 75 yards from where it is now.  There are always a number of pros and cons to closing a street, but it's quite do-able.  One major draw here is that we could close the street to give the vendors a decent amount of time to set up and then have slightly longer market hours.  Currently vendors have 20 minutes to set up in the horseshoe and many of them have to off-load and then move their vehicles out of the way.

     The third part considers using the parking lot behind the Cheese Factory.  It's a little bit off the plaza (maybe 200 yards) and a little bit hidden, but it's a perfect size space for the market and would be very easy to control traffic-wise.  It also has the advantage of not interfering with any of the plaza businesses.  This also has the advantage of giving the vendors time to set up and allowing the market to run a little longer into the evening.  The big issue here is that apparently that parking lot is owned by the State and we don't know yet if we can even have permission to use it.

     So, that's where we stand today.  We've been invited to be on KSVY radio at 8am on November 28th and we're very much looking forward to the interview.  As they say, stay tuned for more . . .

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