Sold on Hillyard

Residents and business leaders in the Hillyard neighborhood are no longer waiting for jobs to come rolling in on the next train. Once the busiest rail yard in Spokane, Hillyard has shifted some of its attention to grass-roots economic resurgence, including transforming a weed-infested cluster of empty warehouses into a bustling public market.

Now in its third full year, the Market Street Market has become a gathering spot for bargain-hunters and area crafts vendors.

The market, at 5906 N. Market, has up until now operated as a weekend-only event. Its managers say they will use a recently awarded federal grant of $250,000 to allow vendors to continue selling at the site through the winter.

The goal, said Market Street Market Director Paul Hamilton, is to bring more shoppers to economically challenged Hillyard, where he was born and has lived for the past 48 years.

The money from the federal grant will allow Hamilton and his partners to expand the market over the next three years, he said. The site’s three warehouses have a total of 75,000 square feet of usable space; they were shut down five years ago by their previous owner, Ziggy’s Building Materials.

Other community development planners say the Market Street Market is one example of turning unused property into a sustainable business.

“Paul is creating a focal point and a new image for that area, and we need that in Hillyard and other neighborhoods,” said Bob Schwartz, a business professor at Eastern Washington University. “We need similar efforts in the West Central, the East Central and other neighborhoods.”

While the federal grant is pivotal in helping the market expand, Hamilton has hired consultants who’ve told him another critical ingredient for success is promoting sales of fresh produce and food items.

Richard McCarthy, an economic development specialist in New Orleans, recently finished a 20-page study of Hamilton’s project. He concluded the Market Street Market needs to expand its food attractions.

“Food changes the market from a place where people go for things they want, to a place with things they need,” he said.

Hamilton said he completely agrees with McCarthy’s view. “We’re still a work in progress,” he said.

The market now has about a dozen or so regular vendors. The goal is to expand to more than 60 vendors, said Hamilton.

Mel Etter, a longtime produce retailer in Spokane, started selling food last year at the market. He was due to resume sales this spring but injured his knee and hasn’t returned yet. Etter, who has sold food through his business, Billy Bob’s Produce, around different locations the past two decades, said he hopes to go back to the Market Street Market by the end of June.

Hamilton wants to see not just more food stalls, but a much wider variety of items for sale there.

“For the first year, we were just a flea market,” Hamilton conceded. After working hard to find other vendors, “we’ve become a lot more than that.”

But finding more produce vendors to sell their food in Hillyard will be a challenge, said Tonie Fitzgerald, a Washington State University Extension agent in Spokane. The problem has nothing to do with Hillyard’s location or ambience, she said.

The problem is that there are not enough growers, Fitzgerald says.

“If we had a lot of venues for producers, we would see more growers come forward,” she said.

Currently, the region has just a handful of farmer’s markets. The only other major public market is the Spokane Farmers Market, which operates in downtown Spokane.

Earlier this year, the Spokane Marketplace closed its doors; it had operated an open-air public market since 1991.

To find more growers, the Market Street Market’s vendor director, Karen Tuininga, is contacting immigrant families and neighborhood centers in north Spokane, trying to get them involved.

“So far we’ve found one Vietnamese family that will sell flowers; it hasn’t been too easy so far,” she said.

But those who know Hamilton say he’s not likely to give up.

He was inspired to turn the former lumber yard into a market while looking at it for more than two years, from the window of his insurance agency across the street.

Once he focused on the possibility of using the buildings as a gathering place and market, Hamilton worked every angle he could. “I’m a spoiled child,” he said. “I go after things and keep going until I get them.”

Added McCarthy, who also runs a public market in New Orleans: “Paul is a real enabler. He has a magnetism that’s attracted people with a strong set of skills and which work well together.”

Hamilton said he’s helped the marketplace evolve by asking others to work with him and finding ways to build partnerships.

One of the three buildings on the site, for example, is an open warehouse that now contains bleachers donated by Whitworth College. He uses that building for auto auctions, boxing matches, basketball and volleyball games and other events.

Last weekend, that building was filled for a daylong auto auction that sold 245 of 300 vehicles on display. Hamilton said he received a flat fee of $2,000 from the auto dealer who ran the auction.

What’s more, “we made about $1,000 just in food sales” during the weekend’s events, Hamilton said.

One of the other two buildings is used solely as a storage area that Hamilton rents or leases to area businesses. The third building houses most of the weekend vendors. It also has a spacious music room and dance area; once a week it becomes a hangout for music fans and neighborhood teens who stroll across Market Street after spending a few hours at the nearby Hillyard skateboard park.

Vendors who have stalls inside the building pay a flat fee to Market Street Market ranging from $40 to $60 per weekend. Those vendors who set up under canopies outside in the adjoining open yard pay $20 per weekend.

To get the federal grant, Hamilton and his partners had to show that the money would be well-spent, even though two of the three buildings at the market are slated to be razed when the North Spokane freeway is completed. He and consultants who contributed to the grant application pointed out that much of what the market offers could easily be transplanted to nearby open space in downtown Hillyard.

Hamilton said he always tells visitors that Hillyard is about more than just his business.

“My goal is that people will come to Hillyard and take the time to see the other shops and businesses around the community,” he said.

If Hamilton gets credit for the idea of the market, he quickly assigns most of its success to support he’s received from neighborhood and civic organizations that have backed the plan.

The $250,000 federal grant, to be used to provide heat to two buildings plus additional restrooms, was developed for the Market Street Market through the Spokane Neighborhood Economic Development Alliance (SNEDA). That group, which is focused on creating jobs in low-income areas, applied for the grant.

In return for the grant, SNEDA acquired a 10 percent stake in the Market Street Market operation.

SNEDA Executive Director Eric Loewe sees the grant as seed money that eventually could create as many as 100 jobs in north Spokane. The plan depends on the public market building a loyal following, which in turn could prompt vendors using the weekend stalls to establish brick-and-mortar businesses. In time, they might expand operations in Hillyard or to other Spokane neighborhoods, said Loewe.

Other groups also joined in the effort. Washington state owns the 10-acre site as it prepares for the eventual construction of the North Spokane freeway. Through Hamilton’s efforts, Spokane city officials agreed to lease the land from the state for $1 a year. Hamilton then arranged for the Hillyard Festival Association, a nonprofit group, to sublease the land from the city. That group hired Hamilton’s for-profit Market Street Market Inc. to run the site.

For the first two years the market lost money — somewhere around $60,000 so far, according to Hamilton.

“Since this March it’s been self-sustaining,” Hamilton said. “At least I don’t have to take any one-thousand dollar bills and cover costs anymore.”

The eventual arrival of the freeway will help the market, not hurt it, Hamilton and others believe. McCarthy said it would be fairly simple to relocate the components of the marketplace down the street.

Spokane City Councilman Al French, a SNEDA board member, sees the freeway as key to helping Hillyard attract more visitors.

The new freeway would terminate at Francis Avenue, several blocks north of the market, he pointed out. As more of the county’s growth occurs to the north of the city, that freeway connection will provide greater access to Hillyard’s now-struggling band of small businesses, French said.

“I’m a big believer in what this market will do for Spokane and Hillyard,” French continued.

“The strength of Spokane’s economy will be with small businesses. The stronger we make them, the better off we’ll be as a community.”