PORT ANGELES — The Saturday farmers market will head back to the Clallam County Courthouse parking lot this weekend after the City Council on Monday night unanimously rejected extending the market’s permit to use Laurel Street downtown.
“We are doing our best to get back to the Clallam County Courthouse parking lot,” a disappointed farmers market board president Maegan Jones said following the council’s unanimous verdict.
“The farmers market will be fine.”
The decision appears to end a six-month battle over the closure of one block of Laurel Street downtown for the Saturday farmers market.
Unaffected is the summertime farmers market that sets up on the Laurel Street block between First and Front streets late Wednesday afternoons.
The issue involving the year-round Saturday market Laurel Street pitted business owners against each other as well as market vendors.
Over the past few months, the controversy resulted in the farmers market moving to two temporary locations.
‘Off a public thoroughfare’
“I think it’s time to move the farmers market off a public thoroughfare, and I think that’s unfortunate,” said City Councilman Gary Braun after Monday night’s relatively short hearing before a subdued crowd of about 40 people.
Mayor Richard Headrick said he thinks the farmers market is a great idea and he understands why it wants a prime downtown location.
But there are traffic and circulation problems with the Laurel Street site, he said.
The City Council had identifiable impacts on traffic and parking from closing the street on Saturdays that it didn’t have before, Headrick said.