Mayor wants to convert building next to Belleville City Hall into vendors market
Mayor Patty Gregory has an idea for revamping Belleville’s farmers market and she wants to know how much it would cost.
Area contractors are being invited to bid on a project that would turn a 4,000-square-foot, city-owned building on South Illinois Street into an indoor/outdoor space for a new “City Market.”
“We’re pretty excited about the possibility,” Gregory said. “And the beauty of it is, (the market) could be open all year long.”
The brick building is at 117 S. Illinois St., on the northwest corner of Illinois and Lincoln, next door to Belleville City Hall. It formerly served as the Belleville News-Democrat’s circulation office for decades before it was sold to a medical supply company.
Today, the city uses the building for storage, Gregory said.
The mayor would like to uncover skylights in the ceiling, knock down a couple of walls and install overhead doors with windows that could be opened to create an open-air atmosphere.
“At this time, we’re really just trying to see what the big cost is going to be so we can give a whole presentation to the City Council,” she said. “I want it to be very thorough.”
Cliff Cross, the city’s director of economic development, planning and zoning, noted that the building would have to be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Cross will take contractors who want to bid on the project on a walk-through from 1 to 2 p.m. Tuesday.
“I don’t know all the specifics of it,” he said. “It’s really (the mayor’s) vision. I’ve just been asked to basically see what it would cost to gut the building and get it prepped.”
Weather-related challenges
A local organization established Old Town Farmers Market in Belleville in 2000. The Belleville Main Street program of the Greater Belleville Chamber of Commerce took over 10 years ago.
The market has moved several times. Vendors now sell produce, meat, baked goods, flowers, art and crafts from tents they set up on South Charles Street between East Main and East Washington. Hours are 7:30 a.m. to noon Saturdays March through November.
The outdoor-only operation faces challenges when it’s extremely hot or rainy, according to Courtney Adams, who became the new Belleville Main Street manager two months ago.
“We have to tear down the whole market in the middle of a storm,” she said. “These straight-line winds come through these historic buildings pretty quick. It can be rough.”
The number of vendors varies from four or five to 12 or 15 on any given week, making the market smaller than it was in its heyday.
Adams attributes this, in part, to the increasing number of farmers markets in the metro-east and St. Louis. Some, like O’Fallon’s Vine Street Market, have structures with open-air capability.
Adams hasn’t been involved in City Market planning, she said, but she likes the concept.
“I think a lot of our vendors would love it if there was an indoor opportunity at a permanent location like that,” she said. “There are so many more markets now. To make (one in Belleville) grow along with the community, we need space and more tools.”
Country French village theme
Before Gregory was elected mayor in 2021, she was founding director of Belleville’s Art on the Square. She envisions a similar family-friendly festival atmosphere at a new City Market.
Plans call for about 20 black-and-white-striped tents to be lined up inside the building with more outside, weather permitting. Gregory would ask high school art students to paint murals on walls with French-style cottages, mountains and lavender fields.
“I want the inside of the market to look like a country French village,” she said. “Belleville does mean ‘beautiful city’ in French.”
The exterior would incorporate old-fashioned, lantern-style lights already on the building, as well as planters full of flowers, according to a rendering by Swansea architect and artist Gary Karasek.
Inside, Gregory would like one room dedicated to instruction, perhaps for crafts or cooking.
Adams, whose position is part time, is committed to manage Old Town Farmers Market only through November of this year. It’s unclear how Belleville Main Street would be involved in City Market.
“It’s a collaborative effort,” Gregory said.
Market hours would be 4 to 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays year-round with parking in a city lot behind City Hall and on the street. Prices for tent rentals haven’t yet been determined.
“There’s a lot of opportunity if we can figure out how we can use buildings that (the city) already owns and make them useful either for the city or developers,” the mayor said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a correction. Old Town Farmers Market started operating in 2000, not 1999.
This story was originally published July 25, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
