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Published on 05/05/1999 All articles from this issue

Farmer's Market may be headed for Foothill College

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue / Town Crier Staff Writer

Responding to "an apparent lack of support from some adjacent businesses" in the Loyola Corners area, the Los Altos City Council denied a use permit for the Loyola Corners Farmers' Market to change its hours and open on Saturdays.

However, Doug Hayden, president of the California Farmers' Market Association, said Monday a verbal agreement had been reached that morning to hold the market at Foothill College, in Parking Lot C, beginning June 5.

Under the agreement with campus officials, Hayden said the market would be held 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., the first Saturday of every month, until Nov. 20.

The latest development may bring closure to the big question of whether the Los Altos area would continue having a farmers' market following mixed reaction at Loyola Corners.

Dick Frederick, president of the Loyola Corners Business Improvement District that sponsors the market, told the council at its April 27 meeting that business owners were divided over the market.

At a January meeting of the BID, business owners voted 12-11 to go forward with the permit for a Saturday market.

Parking was the main problem, business owners said. The market began on Saturdays at Loyola Corners in 1989. It grew successful and used the Bank of America parking lot for market stalls and customer parking.

Then the bank needed its parking on Saturdays. Last year the market moved to Sundays.

But the 32-stall Los Altos market was no match for the nearby 97-stall Mountain View market, on the same day.

"We stumbled through last season," Hayden said.

Merchants began the Loyola Corners market as a way to revitalize their area, hoping the farmers' market would bring customers to their shops, too.

"But I've not gotten the spin-off from the market," said Dick Powell, owner of the Bicycle Outfitter at Loyola Corners. In fact, he was concerned about losing customers who test-ride bikes.

On Saturdays, a big business day for him, there was little place for them to ride due to market congestion, he told the council.

"We will be starting (the market) late," Hayden said, "but the crops are three weeks late because of the frost. We will have (a farmers' market) in Los Altos, and it will be on Saturday."