Bye, bye, City Market

There´s an alternative. The city should develop a weekly farmers market in its underused Lansing Center. The long concourse, fronting Michigan Avenue, is an ideal location. More on this later.

There was a time when city markets mattered. They were the supermarkets of their day, wideeyed alternatives to a city´s small neighborhood grocery stores. People gravitated to the center of the city, often using public transportation, to shop and for entertainment. A vibrant market provided both.

Alas, this isn´t what the few shoppers who stumble through Lansing´s City Market find. It´s a depressing place, not for lack of good intentions by the merchants who set up shop, but because the location, size, limited hours, terrible parking and shoppers´ foreverchanged tastes.

As Lansing grapples with many fiscal challenges, what makes running a money losing market a city priority? Politics.

The city´s progressive crowd squawks about the need to provide sustenance in so-called food deserts. Ah, noblesse oblige. If there are food issues in Lansing, it isn’t because there aren´t ample grocery and convenience stores serving city neighborhoods where people actually live, not in the sparsely populated downtown.

Lansing´s northside neighborhoods are well served by two independent grocers: the Vallarta Supermarket on West Willow Street and Gorman´s Food Market on North Grand River Avenue. For eastside neighborhoods there is Westlund´s Apple Market at 2301 E. Grand River Ave., and the Kroger in Frandor. On the west side, there is the Kroger, Meijer and Horrocks on Saginaw. On the south side, there is the Save-A-Lot at 3222 S. Martin Luther King Blvd., a Stop and Shop on Waverly, and the Meijer on Pennsylvania. There are smaller grocers like the 1910 Meat Market on West Holmes and the Sunset Market downtown on Kalamazoo. As for convenience stores, Quality Dairy has produce, canned goods and other products.

The Vallarta Supermarket offers a full line of grocery products — frozen food, beans and pasta, paper products, pet foods, beer and wine — the things you need when you go shopping. What it sells reflects the shopping habits and tastes of its Asians, Africans and Latin Americans neighbors. The shelves and refrigerated cases are stocked with foods that appeal to native tastes: stock fish bits, swai belly nuggets, goat meat, cheeses, whole pig to pig heads, if you want them. The produce department has the standards — lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, fruits and vegetables along side dasheen root, Jamacian yellow yams, white milanga and more.

This isn´t some good-government cultural outreach. It´s commerce.

A little further north is Gormans, which take special pride in its meats, but stocks a full array of grocery store produces at very competitive prices. The store was founded by Dan Gorman in 1952 and is now run by his sons Pat and Jim. Pat, who has worked there for 34 years, says business is good. He just shakes his head during a discussion of the City Market. He says his store is the city market for shoppers in nearby neighborhoods — a conversation overheard by a customer who reminds Gorman of how Dan would cuts his steaks specially. That’s loyalty.

To salvage the $1.6 million facility, the city’s Lansing Entertainment and Public Facilities Authority, which manages the market, is conducting a survey to determine what people want. After four years in the new location you´d think it would have a clue. Stand outside of the successful markets and ask customers what they want from the City Market. The answer is likely to be selection, price and convenience. It won´t be a yearning for a bygone era for a “beloved” market.

Nostalgia is a sloppy way to develop public policy. And unreliable. In last week´s City Pulse, former city market manager John Hooper, bemoaning the current state of the facility, recalled that when the new market opened in 2010 a crowd of 70,000 was on hand to celebrate. Press reports put the number at a generous 4,000. But the City Market myth lives on.

A trend working against the City Market is the rise of regional farmers´ markets. There are dozens in the region. Every Wednesday afternoon during the winter the Allen Market Place Street Center is packed with vendors selling: produce, fruit cheeses, herbs, cider and donuts. In better weather, it all moves outdoors.

If the city needs to be in the market business — which it doesn´t — this is the model.

And the city-owned Lansing Center is a great location. Why not a Thursday market, with dozens of vendors filling the 350-foot-long Michigan Avenue Concourse. The setting is bright, modern and centrally located. In warmer weather, the market could move onto Michigan Avenue.

As for the City Market pole barn, it might be a good spot for more riverfront dining, especially as apartments being built in the area are occupied. The Waterfront Bar & Grill, now in the market, seems to be doing well. The lesson for Lansing is to let businesses run businesses. The city should focus on governing.