Eight neighborhoods join forces to open Uptown’s first farmers market

Steady rain and wildfire smoke couldn’t keep shoppers away from the Uptown Farmers Market’s opening day. Not after what the storied business district has been through.

“The main thing is to get people to come here and to feel safe coming here,” said organizer Amy Sanborn as she helped a team of rain-jacketed volunteers set up on Thursday. “Come after work to the market, go to a movie after the market, go to dinner and go to trivia at Lake and Irving. And at Magers and Quinn, they’re doing a reading tonight.”

Eight south Minneapolis neighborhoods came together to put on a farmers market, Uptown’s first in recent memory, every Thursday this summer from 4-8 p.m. in the Grand Avenue Plaza outside the struggling Seven Points shopping center, between W. Lake Street and 31st Street.

Once the heartbeat of Minneapolis’ eclectic counterculture and Prince’s old stomping grounds, the Uptown commercial district has been distressed for years. Its cause of death is a worn debate, blamed intermittently on gentrification, online shopping, the loss of on-street parking, anti-police protests and the opioid crisis.

Community meetings this year about the trials and future of Uptown have drawn hundreds.

The East Isles Neighborhood Association operated a farmers market nearby for years, but it went on hiatus in 2023. Now, with just one paid manager, everyone else in the Uptown market’s team of about 40 is a volunteer. The property owner let the market have the venue free of charge.

Metro Transit wrapped buses and put up signs at bus stops in free advertising for the market. The Uptown Farmers Market isn’t asking local brick-and-mortar businesses to pay into it because its goal is to uplift them.

So far, about 25 vendors are signed up, including vegetable farmers, food trucks, potters, jewelry makers and knife sharpeners.

Nancy Hope, an East Isles resident, hawked seasoned pumpkin seeds, a homemade specialty that her friends had long encouraged her to sell. The birth of the Uptown Farmers Market gave her the fire she needed to finally launch a small business, Hopebird.

As rain pelted her tent on Thursday, people Hope knew stopped by to sample her seeds while accordion player Andy Vaaler, another parent she knew from Kenwood Elementary School, performed across the promenade.

“I feel like all of us care so much. We’ve all been affected,” Hope said of the area’s crime troubles in recent years. She’s had catalytic converters swiped, and a car was stolen from in front of her house.

The summer’s still young, but Hope said things are feeling a bit calmer this year. Just being able to walk around the lake at night again would be a gift, she said, and she’s excited about being part of the solution.

“People are going to come back if they feel safe.”

The Uptown Farmers Market is led by the East Isles Neighborhood Association, with financial contributions from Cedar-Isles-Dean, East Bde Maka Ska, West Bde Maka Ska, the Wedge, Lowry Hill, Kenwood and South Uptown.

The next public forum on Uptown’s future is 7-9 p.m. on June 25 at the Granada Theater.