Council gives thumbs up to summer Art Market at First and Elk

“This solutions works…”

[ By Mark Reaman ]

While not yet official, the Crested Butte town council has given a nod of approval to allow a local Crested Butte Art Market to set up every Sunday morning adjacent to the Farmers Market in the First Street and Elk Avenue parking lot.

Local artist Shaun Horne approached the council earlier this month about using the parking lot for the venue since that’s where it was located last summer because of spacing protocols related to COVID-19. He said the area is much more visible for customers and much more comfortable for artists given its location and flat surface to erect tents. The artists previously used the street in the Zero Block of Elk Avenue but last summer vendors from the CB Farmers Market utilized the space to provide more spacing between booths.

At the May 3 council meeting, Horne again advocated for the council to allow the shift. “This question cannot go away for us without a solution,” he said. “This solution works and our (Artists of Crested Butte) board of directors will continue to drive this. The town doesn’t seem to rank local visual artists very high. We are not feeling support from the town for this.

“But this is a great weekly summer art market,” he continued. “There is a great opportunity at First and Elk on Sunday mornings when the parking demand is low.”

Town manager Dara MacDonald had told the council that town policy is to not allow use of town parking lots for such events except under unusual circumstances.

Because Horne’s comments came at the start of the May 3 meeting in the “public comment” section of the agenda, the council did not address the issue until the end of the meeting under “other business.” That was about four-and-a-half hours later and the tired councilmembers briefly discussed the topic and indicated they would be fine with the idea.

Crested Butte Farmers Market director Catherine Vader said she too was in location limbo and was waiting to see what direction the town was headed. “The discussion is throwing us for a loop since we start the first market on May 30,” she said. “The configuration worked really well last summer.”

Council will officially consider the issue when they review the official CB Art Market application for the summer event at the May 17 meeting.