Mulberry House Antiques and "an encroaching Farmers Market."

Downtown from the top, down. Rinse ... repeat.

City Hall non-transparency yet again: Independent downtown businesses negatively impacted by Saturday farmers market street closing.

Little more than a consistent commitment to communication would help to resolve these matters, wouldn't it?

How hard can it possibly be?

An encroaching Farmers Market

I have a shop at 307 Bank St. in New Albany. The shop has been at this location for eight years. Imagine my shock and dismay when I arrived to open the shop this past Saturday, May 9, and found that the Farmers Market had commandeered not only Bank Street between Market and Spring streets, but the sidewalks as well.

There were trucks and cars parked all along the sidewalk with the tents and vendors in the street. No one, not me as a business owner nor the property owners, had been notified that this was to take place or that it would be for the entire season.

Since the Farmers Market is not only open Saturdays, which is normally one of our best business days, but Wednesdays as well, this will seriously impact our business, cutting us down to three days a week.

For some reason, the former location for the Farmers Market is blocked off and not accessible [at the corner of Market and Bank streets] where it has been for years. Construction on improvements was started about the same time the market was due to open for the season [it sat vacant since last November]. Apparently all work has now ceased.

I was under the obviously mistaken impression that the goal of Develop New Albany and the city administration was to help downtown businesses, not force them to close. My shop and the other antique shop around the corner on Market Street bring people from all over the country to New Albany. They patronize not only our antique shops but the other local shops and restaurants.

There are many other places where the Farmers Market could be moved that would not be harmful to the downtown businesses and would not tear up the new sidewalk which has already been damaged by the trucks and cars using it as a parking lot.

— Betty Rinker, Mulberry House Antiques, New Albany