TRAVERSE CITY — There may finally be some light at the end of the tunnel for a long-proposed — and long-delayed — construction project for a new pavilion at the Sara Hardy Downtown Farmers Market in Traverse City.
Plans for the pavilion, which have languished since renderings of the project were presented to the city’s Downtown Development Authority Board in early 2018, are being revived as the DDA maps out the major capital improvements in its TIF-97 Tax Increment Financing plan that’s slated to expire in 2027 while the city plans a major overhaul to the parking lot that hosts the market.
“This is a project that’s taken a really, really long time to get where we want to get it to,” said Mayor Amy Shamroe, a member of the DDA Board.
DDA Executive Director Harry Burkholder was serving on the DDA Board when the current plans for the pavilion were unveiled more than seven years ago. A leadership transition at the DDA created an early pause in pursuit of the project, he said, and the pavilion remained shelved while the DDA pursued purchase of the Rotary Square property at the corner of Union and State streets downtown and whether that property could be market’s future home.
“I think there was a pause to see: Would it fit in the civic (Rotary) square?” he said.
But support for the project remains strong from market vendors and the DDA’s Farmers Market Advisory Committee, officials said.
“They consider this way overdue,” Burkholder said. “They’ve been patiently waiting for this project to come to fruition for quite some time… there’s still a great deal of enthusiasm to move forward.”
Plans for the pavilion are largely unchanged from the concept unveiled eight years ago. The centerpiece of the project is a 10-foot-wide walkway for market patrons under a permanent open-air pavilion structure. It would provide more than 50 covered vendor spaces, with more vendor sites spaces under pop-up tents that would lead to more than 100 vendor spaces at the market.
Burkholder told the DDA board late last month that he met recently with representatives of Beckett & Raeder, the consulting firm that created the original design. Consultants gave a cost estimate of up to $133,000 to update the pavilion design and develop construction drawings including updated construction cost estimates, which came in at $3 million for the original proposal.
But some changes will be needed to make the project fit within the city’s planned redesign of Lot B, a city parking lot along Grandview Parkway west of Cass Street that hosts the Farmers Market. City Engineer Anne Pagano said the planned upgrades to Lot B have also been on the drawing board for awhile — the city sought bids on the project 2 1/2 years ago but received only one proposal that came in at more than $1 million and the city delayed work on the project.
“It wasn’t terrible at the time, but it wasn’t a great number,” Pagano said.
But the city is getting ready to move ahead with the Lot B rebuild in the 2026 construction season and now hopes to include the pavilion project in that bidding process.
“The pavilion was kind of an add-on,” Pagano said. “We would bid it out as one project … hire one contractor to do both at the same time.”
Zach Cole, a civil engineer II for the city’s Engineering Department, said the Lot B work will involve relocating some of the lot out of the state Department of Transportation right-of-way for Grandview Parkway on the north end of the parking lot. Vehicle movement will be designed in a circular loop with access from Cass Street near the Traverse Connect building, and the work will also eliminate the current connection with the Lot T parking area to the west.
The Lot B upgrades will also entail installation of subsurface stormwater management features, and new catch basins to divert stormwater run-off into the Boardman/Ottaway River that will eliminate some of the existing parking along the river. The work will be done to mitigate some long-standing contamination spots under the lot, and be landscaped in accordance with the city’s tree planting and vegetation policies. Cole said the redesign will leave around 100 parking spaces with six van-accessible spaces, compared to 136 spaces in the current lot.
City engineers will finalize the design plans this year and seek bids in early 2026, with hopes to begin construction next spring.
Burkholder said the plans for the Farmers Market pavilion will have to be scaled to fit in with the pending changes to Lot B, which will require some adjustments to the current design.
“We want to keep the current theme of the design, but tweak it to an appropriate size,” Burkholder said, adding that some other amenities could include a small music/performance stage and a small incubator kitchen.
The Sara Hardy Downtown Farmer’s Market started in 1984, evolving from a handful of vendors in its infancy to one of the largest farmers markets in Michigan. It’s named after Sara Hall Hardy, a community leader who died in 1992. She was among the founders of the downtown market and was also involved in the DDA, the city’s Human Rights Commission and the local League of Women Voters chapter. She was married to Larry Hardy, a former mayor in the city who died in 2002 and is the namesake of the DDA’s downtown parking deck.
Along with being a popular destination for local residents and visitors, Burkholder said the farmers market is also an economic engine for the downtown. An economic impact study by the DDA several years ago showed that 77 percent of farmers market patrons also spend money at other downtown businesses, he said.
But hurdles remain to bring the long-discussed pavilion project to fruition, he noted. The first is get the DDA’s 2025-26 operating budget approved by the city commission, after some commissioners a year ago balked at signing off on the DDA’s current budget. Next year’s DDA budget includes $2.8 million for the pavilion project, and Burkholder said the DDA will also seek regional and state grant funds to help supplement the work.
The pavilion is among three big-ticket items that the DDA has prioritized in the remaining years of the TIF-97 plan, which is now called Moving Downtown Forward.
The others include continued upgrades to the Rotary Square property, along with the initial phase of the Boardman/Ottaway riverwalk project that includes construction of a new pedestrian bridge over the river that accesses the farmers market site.
“There still has to be a decision on whether that work fits with our priorities,” Burkholder said. “But right now we’re trying to move the ball forward on all three of these projects.”