The Queen Anne Community Council at its April 4 board meeting voted unanimously to support plans for a Queen Anne farmers market next to the community center and McClure Middle School.
The support included a letter to Seattle Parks and Recreation urging the agency to approve the application for a permit, said George Counts, a council board member and chairman of the Queen Anne Farmers Market Association. "And we're very pleased with that," he said.
There had been some concern on the council about traffic, parking and interference with ballgames on the adjacent sports fields, Counts conceded.
Although the Little League season will be over by the time the market opens, the adult softball league will be using the fields until the end of August or the first of September, he said.
But the association came up with a solution. The plan now calls for the market to be located in the McClure parking lot beginning on June 28 after classes at the school are out for the summer, Counts said.
And once the adult softball league wraps up its season and school begins again, the market will move to the south side of the community center and wrap around the building on First Avenue West, he said. "The purpose of that [move] is to give us a 15-week season," Counts said of plans to have the market open from 3 to 7 p.m. on Thursdays from June 28 to Oct. 4.
In addition, he said, when school starts, delivery trucks for the market will unload between 12:30 and 1:30 p.m. to avoid conflict with school buses.
The market plan also includes the use of uniformed traffic monitors to make sure produce trucks don't snarl traffic and to help customers find parking in the neighborhood, Counts stressed. Nearby neighborhood residents will also be notified of the plans when the parks department approves the application, he said.
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