A local treasure

Lansing City Market has come a long way since its early days, when the building was heated by barrels of fire. But the lack of heat didn’t keep it from staying open year-round, a defining characteristic that holds true today, even as many local farmers markets close their doors after only two or three seasons.

Although many farmers and other vendors don’t sell in the winter, businesses still fill the west wing of the building with fresh food and other locally made products.

Customers like mathematics junior Liz Trexler come for the atmosphere.

Trexler said she studied abroad in London, where big, open markets are more common, and she wanted to find something similar near MSU.

“The atmosphere is very friendly,” she said. “Everyone is so welcoming.”

Trexler said she heard about the market through a friend and usually buys cheese or Chinese food.

For many of the sellers, regular customers make the market a community gathering place.

“It’s like a small town or something,” said Kris Zawisza, co-owner of the market’s Grand River Coffee Company. “You see a lot of the same people week to week, day to day sometimes. It’s just very friendly.”

Zawisza’s business, which opened last May, is one of the market’s newest additions.

She said the market serves as an “incubator” that allows people a place to get a new business off the ground.

On Jan. 12, Okemos residents Komi Hata and David Ventimiglia, both 36, stopped to get coffee, using cups they saved from their last visit. Zawisza also had a booth at a farmers market in Okemos, but when it closed for the winter the couple followed her to Lansing.

“We come for the coffee and for the milk,” Hata said, noting that going to Lansing City Market is a bit of a drive for them.

One of the market’s biggest draws is the amount of local and organic food vendors, such as the East Lansing Food Co-op, which debuted in the market in November as a branch of its main store at 4960 Northwind Drive.

While many of the market’s produce vendors only sell for three seasons, ELFCO provides fresh produce year-round.

“I’m thrilled that East Lansing Food Co-op is here now and they’re providing us with some greens that are local greens, so we have a little bit of our seasonal produce here even though it’s January,” said Diane Thompson, a member of Friends of the Market, a group that promotes the city market.

The food co-op’s shop in the market is packed, wall to lime green wall, with baskets of beans and grains, jars of pasta sauce, boxes of energy bars and a fridge filled with eggs, milk, cream and fresh produce.

Much of the produce is organic and grown locally.

Zawisza said part of what attracts people to the market is the increasing concern about knowing where food comes from and what’s in it.

“Here you can often buy directly from farmers or producers of products,” Zawisza said.

Being able to buy straight from the producer is part of what brings Beth Fife to the market a couple of times every month.

On Saturday the Grand Ledge resident picked up bread from Westwind Milling Company, which operates a certified organic stone mill in Argentine, Mich., and sells a variety of flour, pancake mix and bread.

“I can’t bake my own bread, but yesterday (Westwind) milled it and baked it,” Fife said. “That’s amazing to me — it’s like living history.”

Bringing new life to the market

Even with its longtime vendors and loyal customers, many agree that Lansing City Market needs a bit of a facelift.

John Hooper, the market’s supervisor of operations, said he has always been a fan of Lansing City Market but knows it has seen better days.

“Its heyday was a couple decades ago,” Hooper said. “People, for whatever reason — and believe me, we’re all baffled by this — have really stopped coming to the market.”

Some ways he’d like to see the market grow is to hold events and demonstrations and feature live music.

Last semester, associate professor Teresa Mastin had two public relations classes that formulated plans for the market to attract more people.

Mastin said the goal of the classes was to help the market “understand better how the media works and how they can use the media to gain coverage.”

Ni Lu, a first-year public relations graduate student, said she hadn’t heard of Lansing City Market before taking Mastin’s class.

Lu said she didn’t have a great first impression of the market because the building is so old, but there is a lot that could be changed to lure more people.

“I think they have so much potential because this market has so much history,” she said.

Another student in Mastin’s class, communication senior Shalane Walker, suggested the market hold more events and get agricultural students involved.

Walker said she really liked the market’s food and most of it was reasonably priced, but it could still be a challenge to get more people out.

“It’s hard because a lot of stuff you can get from Meijer,” she said.

Zawisza also said the market could use some improvements, which is why she also helps the Friends of the Market.

“When I came in, I saw a lot of potential here,” she said.

“I liked the ambiance but clearly it needs a larger customer base and probably a greater diversity of vendors to draw people in.”

Last fall, the city of Lansing proposed building a new structure and moving Lansing City Market to a plot of land close to its current location, which Hooper said could be what the market needs to be revitalized.

While the details are still in the air, Hooper is optimistic.

“One of the biggest pluses to building a new market would be the excitement it would generate in the community,” he said. “(It would) hopefully attract younger people and newer people to the market — make it sort of a cool place to be, a happening place.”