Only an outpouring from the community can save the popular Hanalei farmers’ and craft market at the Hanalei Family Center. The center’s board recently terminated its relationship with the man who started the market, George Anderson, and is now asking
Only an outpouring from the community can save the popular Hanalei farmers’ and craft market at the Hanalei Family Center.
The center’s board recently terminated its relationship with the man who started the market, George Anderson, and is now asking the public to help them decide if both the farmers’ market and the craft side of the market should remain.
“We’re in a wait-and-see pattern for the next two weeks,” said Johanna Gomez, the center’s executive director. If there’s “an outpouring of support” from the community, said Gomez, “we will look at that.”
The problem, according to Gomez, is that hundreds turn up for the market each Saturday, and cars park on a nearby county soccer field and damage it.
Those parking difficulties and damage, among other things, had center board members rethinking the craft-fair side of the market, but not the farmers’ side of the market.
Now, both the farmers and the craftspeople will be able to share the market space for the next two weeks, Gomez said, during which time a questionnaire will be passed out at the market and via the center’s Web site, halehalawai.org. It asks, among other things, whether farmers’ and crafts markets are appropriate activities for the center.
A summary of the findings will be posted on the center’s Web site, after which the center’s board will decide if the craft vendors, produce and food vendors — or both — stay or go.
“While the market will no longer continue under its current operator, we are wondering whether the community wants us to try and host a farmers’ market in some fashion at our facility,” read a letter posted on the center’s Web site.
Of the 40 or so vendors in the market, about half are farmers, half crafts people. The customer split is about “fifty-fifty” visitor-local, Anderson said. The market is the second- or third-largest on the island, and charges vendors a nominal $8 fee to sell there. But there will be no fees charged until the situation is finalized, Gomez said.
Meanwhile, Anderson said he’d like to move the whole market somewhere, possibly to nearby Waipa or Princeville, but wasn’t sure if it could be done. The questions can be answered via e-mail, regular mail, or in writing submitted to the center’s suggestion box.
Business Editor Phil Hayworth may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 251) or phayworth@pulitzer.net.
