The Queen Anne Farmers Market announced Monday that it will open this year on June 2 with Jaime Collado serving as its new manager.
Collado has spent more than nine years managing local restaurants. She is a graduate of Bastyr University, where she studied nutrition and exercise. Collado has also taught healthy eating classes to teens.
Amanda Cross will be returning as the market’s assistant manager, a position she held last year. A graduate of the University of Minnesota, Cross was instrumental in implement the market’s government-funded food assistance program, according to a press release from the Queen Anne Farmers Market Association.
The announcement comes after former Director Julie Whitehorn announced her resignation last Friday. Whitehorn, who has been the market’s director for the past two years and worked there in various capacities during the past four years, did not give a reason for her resignation. But in her letter, she advises everyone to support the market, its new management team, and the creation of a new advisory committee to oversee the market’s long-term future.
The resignation ends a tumultuous period for the market’s management team in which Whitehorn and the market’s founding organization, Queen Anne Neighbors for Responsible Growth (QANRG), had been at odds over her salary, the parameters of her role and certain management practices at the market.
QANRG President Scott Smith said Friday that the organization thanks Whitehorn for all of the work she had done on behalf of the market and that she has been offered a contract to work as a consultant for the market.
Whitehorn has not commented yet on whether she will accept the consulting position and has not returned phone calls.
“We actually have a team of folks who have been involved with the market in the past who will be involved with the management team this year,” Smith said. “Many of the same supporters and staff from last year and previous season will be back, both as volunteers and paid staff members.”
Smith said that under the framework of the market structure, QANRG, which founded the market, is the sponsor of the market and the entity in charge of overseeing the nonprofit designation and permits with the City of Seattle. It is also in charge of the market’s financial management.
This smooth transition looked in jeopardy only last week when QANRG representatives announced by email on April 6 that the organization would assume overall responsibility for the market and that Whitehorn would be replaced as director of the market.
Whitehorn countered by releasing an email of her own later in the day that stated she would remain market director and that QANRG would no longer oversee the market. Whitehorn wrote in her email that “[Queen Anne Farmers Market Association] is now an independent nonprofit and has made the necessary arrangements to proceed with the season independent of our former fiscal agent [QANRG], given that negotiations failed.”
Some observers who received both emails didn’t know what to make of the confusing situation. Negotiations between the two sides had been rocky for months, creating an uncertain environment for the market and its employees. The impasse apparently was solved after a meeting with Seattle’s Office of Economic Development (OED). The details of the meeting were not made public.
Steven Johnson, the director of OED, said Friday that the management problems are now behind the market and it is time to focus on this spring’s opening.
“I am very excited about the group of community leaders who have agreed to work together on a real business plan that makes sure we have the structure in place to grow this market and make it self sustaining,” Johnson said. “Julie did a marvelous job of marketing and growing the market. But it’s time to focus on how do we move forward from here.”
The OED is helping to organize a steering committee that will use a Department of Neighborhood Grant of $33,700, which was obtained with Whitehorn’s help last year, to develop a sustainable business plan and organizational model for the market’s long-term success. City officials said that the Queen Anne Chamber of Commerce and Community Council are two of the groups that will be represented on the committee. They also want major property owners and key business leaders to join the committee to make sure it is a broad coalition of community stakeholders.
The OED is expected to complete gathering the committee members together within the next two weeks and then begin mapping out a process for the strategic planning effort.
Johnson said he is excited that Queen Anne’s market will be among the city’s first successful independent self-sustaining neighborhood markets.
“This is ground-breaking work that I’m sure other neighborhood market will be aware of and follow,” Johnson said.
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