Grandview sets sights on a downtown farmers market

By Kathy Feist

Grandview has made it official. Next summer, the city’s farmers market will move to 514 Main St. in a newly built facility. 

“I like to call it the Grandview Market Place,” says Mayor Leonard Jones. “It will be more than a farmers market.” Mayor Jones visualizes a facility used for public events, including small concerts, as well as private ones. The space will be run by the Parks and Recreation Department. 

Grandview is following the steps of other local municipalities such as Independence, Lee’s Summit and Overland Park that have found success in building a multi-purpose facility for farmers markets in their downtown area. The semi-enclosed structure provides overhead protection and electricity for the vendors and boosts the economy in the downtown area. 

The Grandview Market Place is part of a larger plan to improve Grandview’s Main Street area on the west end. 

The future location is currently a vacant lot near the railroad. It faces a small retail strip that includes Simply Grand Kitchen and Creamery, Dunn Deal BBQ, and Holloway Motorcycle Services. Along with May Milling Company, the shops are isolated from the rest of Grandview’s retail district. 

Grandview’s Main Street Expansion plan will connect the two areas by installing wider sidewalks from 7th Street to 3rd Street that will accommodate outdoor dining, more landscaping, and new streetlights to match the rest of Main Street. The plan, which also includes street resurfacing, new medians and crosswalks is part of the city’s $21 million bond package “Building Up Grandview.” 

Roughly $250,000 of that bond is earmarked for the farmers market structure. The city plans to secure further funding by applying for a Housing and Urban Development grant. “If [the government] doesn’t want blight, this is a way to see funding in action– to take grassland and make something productive out of it,” says Mayor Jones. 

Grandview’s plans came as a pleasant surprise to a few vendors interviewed by the Telegraph. On one Saturday morning in mid-June about 10 vendors, mostly selling baked goods, hand-crafted items and freshly cut flowers set up booths outside Grandview’s community center, The View. Located at 13500 Byars Rd., the farmers market sits on the eastern edge of the city, in a semi-rural area with a promise of future growth.  Traffic is light. At any given time, about a half dozen shoppers perused the products: baked goods, hand-crafted items, fresh flowers, and microgreens. It was still too early in the season for local produce, but one vendor had a handful of zucchini, peppers and yellow squash along with homemade cookies and jams.  “I’ve been selling at both Grandview and Belton’s farmers markets for the past three years,” he says. “They are both the same: slow.” His humdrum expression changed, however, when told of next year’s move. “Really?” he said in disbelief.  

“That’s a good thing.”