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The market launched in 1990 at the foot of Broadway; it moved in 2000 to Esther Street on the west side of Esther Short Park, where the city supplied plentiful utility hookups and a convenient lack of curbs for pedestrians to trip over. Since then, the market map had been an inverted L shape that runs down Esther from Eighth Street and turned right (west) at the roundabout at Sixth. But now, Sixth has been called back into service for visitor and construction traffic, which will continue through the summer and, perhaps, well into the future.

The new layout abandons West Sixth for segments of West Eighth on either side of Esther, plus a slice of Esther to the north. What used to be an L will become a lowercase t. Boldt said he’s not sure how long the relocation will last; it might be permanent. “I don’t know if we’ll ever move back to Sixth,” he said.

The market isn’t losing any vendor booths to this change, but there will be some nuanced differences. Sixth Street was wide enough to host a middle row of vendors. But that’s not possible on Eighth, where there will be two rows of vendors, like on Esther Street.

Vendors at the west end of Sixth sometimes felt stuck at the “dead end” of the market where foot traffic dwindled, Boldt said, but there shouldn’t be any dead end in the new, centralized location. There’s even a climate advantage to the change, he added, since Eighth Street’s trees and buildings offer more shelter from the sun and wind.

Thirty years, market beers

The move also means closing the intersection of Eighth and Esther to traffic during operating hours, and Boldt envisions using that space for 30th-year programming — family activities, games, performances, who knows? If the need to plan the move from Sixth to Eighth hadn’t suddenly taken over in December, he confessed, he’d be further along with plans for fun at the market.

The main things brewing at the market for this special summer, he said, are commemorative 30-year market beers (for sale in bottles to take home, not on tap to drink on-site) by Loowit, Beerded Brothers and perhaps other local brewers, too. Also, Boldt said, popular downtown restaurant Nonavo Pizza will bring a portable oven to the market and cook up artisanal pizza slices topped with the freshest ingredients — purchased from fellow vendors at the market that morning.

Meat market

What else is new at the market this year? Protein, operations director Erin Timmerman said.