Waterloo Region Connected

Was there on the weekend; they have the foundation poured, if I was looking at the right building.

Hope they do something about parking or transit access. The lots were full and unpaved - it was a dust storm with every gust of wind.

St. Jacobs Farmers' Market fire causes estimated $2M in damage

September 2, 2013 | CBC News | LINK

Quote:A sprinkler system could have made a big difference at the fire-ravaged main building at the St. Jacobs Farmers' Market north of Waterloo, Ont., according to Woolwich Fire Department Chief Rick Pedersen.

The building was destroyed by a fire early Monday morning.

"It’s older construction, heavy timber, which would [require a sprinkler system] if it was built to today’s code. But back then it wasn’t required," said Pedersen of the building, which he estimated at 24,000 square feet and described it as "combustible."

Pedersen said a sprinkler system could have saved the building or minimized the damage.

Pedersen made the remark at a news conference at noon on Monday as he briefed media on the latest on the fire that destroyed the popular southern Ontario tourist destination and local landmark.

Damage from the fire could be as high as $2 million, according to Pedersen.

"The main two-storey building is a total loss," said Deputy Chief Dale Martin earlier on Monday.

Martin said that the fire department received a call around 1:48 a.m. ET regarding a fire at the market.

"On arrival, the farmers' market building — the main building — was totally involved in fire, coming out through the roof. At that point we concentrated on the other buildings around here, where the livestock sales happen," said Martin.

No one was hurt in the fire, said Martin.

The office of the Ontario Fire Marshal is now investigating the cause of the blaze.

Forty-five firefighters from four different stations battled the fire, according to Pedersen. The blaze was under control by around 6 a.m.

There did not appear to be any major damage to surrounding buildings, he said.

Woolwich Mayor Todd Cowan said the loss of the St.Jacobs building is devastating.

"The biggest word is shock — shock and devastation for the area. But you know this a community that is used to barn raising and rebuilding and I think that the community is already starting to come together," he said.

Dawn McClure and Jim Bowie of Elora were among hundreds of people who flocked to the scene as fire crews tended to the remnants of the blaze.

"I feel sorry for them, Bowie said through tears referring to the vendors who lost everything in the fire.

"You're in our prayers," said McClure. "This is probably the worst time of year for that to happen.

"It's going to put a few of [the vendors] out of business," she said.

Cowan said around 60 vendors have been affected by the fire, and the township plans to do anything it can to help rebuild the market.

"We're going to help fast-track the building site plans and the building permits and whatever we can do to help," he said.

The cause of the fire has yet to be determined.

Determined to rebuild

Regional Chair Ken Seiling called the market a "great asset" and said he's confident the market will rebuild.

"We’ve been going to the market as long as it’s been established. Sometimes it’s more of a social outing than a purchase day, but we quite enjoy the market and the produce they have and the people we meet there," he said.

However, he said the region was not planning to offer financial assistance.

"There are a number of vendors and they certainly will be impacted, but a lot of these people operate out of their farms or other locations, so in terms of the market, it will be a loss of opportunity, but I think that we’ll see the outdoors vendors will carry on and the indoor vendors will find other opportunities for business."

Sheila Shantz, the manager of the market, said she would like it to be open "as soon as possible" but must wait to talk to the fire department and the fire marshal, before determining if it can open Thursday.

St. Jacobs market is open Tuesdays during the summer, and from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Thursday and Saturdays all year round.

"Right now we are very concerned for our vendors and just worried about getting them back and working again," said Shantz.

"That’s what we’re going to be concentrating on, we’re going to work on whatever we can do to move this along quickly.

"Speaking with the vendors out here this morning we’re all prepared to take that walk, and do the building that we need to do," she said.

At St. Jacobs market, a new building rises from the ashes

December 20, 2013 | Andrea Gordon | Thestar.com | LINK

Quote:ST. JACOBS, ONT.—Ashley Gingrich’s fingers are flying. She piles tiny cookies that are edible works of art into cardboard boxes while customers point and choose.

By her feet in the Gracie’s Christmas Cookies booth at St. Jacobs Farmers’ Market, the stack of empty bins grows. Shoppers are lining up to buy 40 kinds of the bite-sized treats.

Gingrich, 17, and two other young women in Mennonite caps and aprons arrived in the dark hours of the morning with 70 bins of “melting moments” sandwich shortbreads, peanut butter balls and other bestsellers. At the rate they are going, there will only be crumbs to take home.

At the other end of the new Harvest Barn, Tony Lobrutto smiles behind his meat counter. Light pours through the translucent dome roof onto crowds strolling the aisles of the 15,600-square-foot building and inhaling the scent of cedar and spicy homemade summer sausage.

“It’s been a good day,” says Lobrutto, one of three brothers who runs Charles Quality Meats Ltd. of St. Agatha, launched by their father 35 years ago to sell chemical-free lamb, beef, goat and rabbit they handle “from the stable to the table.”

More than three months have passed since a Labour Day fire burned the market’s main building to the ground, destroying his counter, along with the equipment and inventory of 58 other vendors. The Ontario Fire Marshal’s office is still investigating the cause of the fire.

But last week, on opening day for the temporary new barn that has risen from the ashes, things were finally starting to look up. Lobrutto’s bacon sold out in 45 minutes. Ground beef and lamb chops disappeared soon after. By noon, all that was left in many of the black trays were scrawled labels.

Nearby, the Artisan Breads booth was down to three loaves and a croissant. At Sunnyside Up Sheepskin and Leathergoods, a stream of customers were dropping by with hugs and to try on Ray Anderson’s cozy handmade slippers.

“We have a lot of really good customers here,” says Anderson, 63, who’s been in business for 39 years and lost about $50,000 worth of inventory in the fire.
“The support has been huge.”

For many vendors, that support is what has kept them going and still moves them to tears. The overnight blaze, causing at least $3 million in damage, left many with sharply reduced income, or none at all, during the most lucrative season of the year.

It devastated a community renowned for its Thursday and Saturday farmers’ market, which attracts thousands of tourists each week to the Waterloo Region and provides a livelihood for local farmers, cooks and craftspeople. Some had no insurance, citing the prohibitive cost. Others were covered for contents but not the loss of business that followed.

But amid the wreckage, the barn-raiser spirit of St. Jacobs has soared. That communal rush to help one another is rooted in the community’s Mennonite history. When a barn burns down, everyone goes immediately to the site to rebuild, doing whatever they can to contribute, from hammering and sawing to preparing and serving food.

The fire

Early Labour Day morning, Tony Lobrutto got the grim news from an unlikely source: a friend in Ghana who texted him after seeing photos of the burning building on Twitter.

By the time the family arrived at the market, cars and pedestrians were making a procession around the perimeter.
“It was unbelievable, the support we were getting right there from people,” recalls Tony, 46. “You could see they were all customers you knew lined up against the fence crying.”

The outpouring from many whose names he doesn’t even know still takes him by surprise.

“Over the years you have customers you see every week and they start to feel like family,” he says. “But I never realized they felt the same way.”
Vendors’ voices wobble as they recite tales of customers tracking them down at home to personally express condolences. Local businesses began collecting donations.

An elderly customer who buys sheepskin slippers from Sunnyside Up appeared one day at Ray and Brenda Andersons’ front door in Cambridge and placed a card in Ray’s hand. When he opened it later, he found five crisp $100 bills.

People dropped off meals as the couple scrambled to rebuild inventory, with Ray sewing and cutting round the clock in his shop in their stucco garage. They had insurance but the claim has been denied and they are still negotiating with the company.

In October, fellow artisans donated handiwork for a silent auction at a fundraiser organized by family and friends at Maxwell’s Music House in Waterloo. People who knew that Ray recycled old fur coats to trim some of his sheepskin hats began collecting them to donate.

“It’s been a life lesson, very humbling,” says Brenda, 62. They had to take help; they needed it. “People are wonderful,” she adds. “The good that’s come out of this, I mean ...” She can’t get the rest of the sentence out.

Sunnyside Up is the Andersons’ full-time business and the market is their retirement plan. They lost inventory that had taken thousands of hours to create, and all their market income during the fall, a season that generates 80 per cent of their annual sales.
“There’s a piece of Ray in everything that went up in flames,” says Brenda.

They include 20 walking sticks he whittled and hand-painted, that sell for $200 to $1,500 apiece, the rack of leather belts, hundreds of pairs of slippers and stacks of purses and hats. Gone is the leather chair he’d reupholstered for customers trying on slippers, along with the couple’s original sign from 1974, and a belt rack Ray had used for 40 years.

But there are also pieces of customers in the unexpected gifts they’ve received in the last three months. A local blacksmith forged Ray a new belt rack. Someone else built them a new sign.

Like other vendors, they are quick to point out the most important thing — thank God no one was hurt in the blaze. And also to applaud market management for bending over backwards to get businesses up and running as soon as possible.

Within a week of the fire, owner Mercedes Corp. had reorganized the adjacent Peddler’s Village building to temporarily accommodate some of the food vendors while construction began on the Harvest Barn, which has space for 49 of the 59 who saw their booths destroyed. A new permanent main building is planned elsewhere on the site, slated to finish by the end of 2014.

The Kitchener and Waterloo Community Foundation set up a vendor relief funded to raise $75,000 that will be matched by two local donors, potentially raising a total of $225,000 to help cover losses.

But it still couldn’t stop the bleeding. At its peak, about 400 vendors sell everything from apples and tomatoes to handmade quilts, back bacon on a bun and antiques in the buildings or at outdoor stalls. And as news of the fire spread, tourism dwindled, with many incorrectly assuming the market was closed. Even local customers confused about where their favourite booths had been relocated were dropping off.

But in the face of this, neighbours and friends came through.

Rebuilding

In front of the cash register at the new Quilts and More booth, Esther Weber has posted a handwritten Bible verse from the Book of Job: “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.”

Weber, 61, says she put it up to remind her of what’s she’s been given since the fire destroyed $16,000 worth of handmade quilts, each amounting to weeks of work.

“I get emotional,” says Weber, who ran a produce stand for 28 years before taking over the quilting business two years ago.
A neighbour broke the news on Labour Day. Weber lives alone in Elmira and doesn’t have television or radio. She was in shock. But her Mennonite community and customers were quick to step up.

Friends and neighbours donated their own handmade goods and even gathered for a quilting bee to help restock her racks. Her church helped cover the financial losses of her goods, though she still lost three months of income.

“That’s just what we were taught, that when people are in need you all go to help,” she says, as a tear slides down her cheek.
For Tony Lobrutto, there have been important lessons amid the distress.

Charles Quality Meats has been a mainstay of the market for 20 years and customers there are its primary source of income.

“This business supports three families,” says Lobrutto. He has three kids, his brothers have another three between them. It will be a struggle to get through the year.
Insurance covered damages of roughly $20,000 in lost equipment, but that’s nothing compared to the loss of income resulting from a 50-per-cent drop in sales.

Yet still, he’s buoyed by customers filling their shopping bags and offering excited greetings. And he is counting his blessings. Christmas gifts may be a little lighter this year. But his wife will still put up three trees as she always does. And three generations will still gather at his parents’ to feast on his mother’s Sicilian soup, rabbit, grilled lamb, turkey and homemade bread “you can smell a mile away.”

“Despite everything that’s happened I think it brought us closer,” he says. In a family company it’s easy to get preoccupied with business matters. “But this has strengthened us, it’s brought us back to family.”

Permanent rebuild of St. Jacobs Market will begin this month

June 11, 2014 | CTV Kitchener | LINK

Quote:Work will begin later this month on a new main building for the St. Jacobs Farmers Market, in the hopes the whole project will be complete by next spring.
Mercedes Corp., which owns the market, announced Wednesday that site work will commence before the end of June on a replacement for its original building, which burned down last fall.

Sixty vendors were displaced by the fire – the cause of which was never officially determined – but have since found homes either in other market buildings, in a temporary new main building or in the market’s outdoor area.

The new building will encompass 34,000 square feet – or about 40 per cent more space than the original. It will feature wider aisles, more seating and room for additional vendors.

In a press release, Mercedes Corp. said the new building will be designed to evoke the original structure, with heavy wooden beems.
The current temporary building will also remain part of the market, and likely be offered seasonally to vendors who currently set up outdoors.

“Every day, we continue to feel strong support as we work to renew the Farmers’ Market,” Mercedes Corp. president Marcus Shantz said in the release.
The market will remain open through the construction period, Mercedes Corp. said, and more parking will be added to the site as part of the renovations.

September 20, 2014

October 29th

The first timbers are being erected this morning. The elevator shaft is also in. This shot is taken on the Farmer's Market Road side looking towards Peddlars Village.

April 25, 2015

That looks really nice and rather similar to the structure that burned down. I'm generally against faux architecture, but reconstruction after damage or expansion of an existing structure are good examples where sticking to old styles is appropriate.

This also shows that preserving heritage can be achieved in ways that allow for replacement of old structures.

The former market building wasn't all that old, was it?

(04-26-2015, 04:05 PM)panamaniac Wrote: [ -> ]The former market building wasn't all that old, was it?

It was built in 1986, so no, not what I would consider "old" for a building.

Here are a few interior shots from the Market's facebook page.

The glulam beams and columns aren't exactly traditional, but I think they look good, and they are stronger than traditional wood beams and columns.

Will the temporary structure be taken down or left in place when the new building opens? It works pretty well.

(05-22-2015, 09:33 AM)panamaniac Wrote: [ -> ]Will the temporary structure be taken down or left in place when the new building opens?  It works pretty well.

It'll be left up and some of the outdoor vendors will be offered a space should they be interested, opening up outdoor slots for more vendors.