The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Franklin Street didn’t work, but don’t give up
The Franklin Street experiment in Torrington has apparently failed. Thursday evening, the crowd was sparse, the vendors too few and the civic enthusiasm lacking. Discouraging though it was, this does not mean an end to the downtown marketplace. It means a new approach, new studies and new ideas are needed.
Apparently, a return to Main Street will be the key. But before that can happen, there’s a lot of thrashing out to be accomplished.
The highly successful Main Street run from 2009 through
2014 had to be moved this summer because of scheduled sidewalk repairs. Franklin Street provided a river-walk, but it is shorter, and so narrow that booths could be accommodated only on one side of the street and, when fully occupied and largely attended, cramped.
It appears a return to Main Street is the only solution.
“The first thing we will do,” Mayor Elinor Carbone said Friday morning, “is get feedback from everyone involved. We’re going to hold a couple of roundtable discussions and collect all the information and ideas we can to make sure we have an accurate reflection of the situation. We’ll proceed from there.”
The selection of a manager who can take charge full time and make all the right decisions will be important. The mayor called it a primary goal and stressed the need, also, for a large number of volunteers.
She is not completely abandoning Franklin Street as a viable site for some kind of “social-civic event, perhaps an Irish or Italian festival.”
“We’ll have to see what it lends itself to,” she said.
The best part of the festival is, for me at least, meeting and enjoying the vendors and performers. One of the steadiest and best since the beginning has been “Better Baking by Beth,” Beth Zukowski’s business, which always was well-staffed and fully stocked. BBBB gets an A for attendance and for delicious merchandise.
Thursday, I discovered Twin Pines Farm of Thomaston, as well. Owner Raymond LaMaire, his wife Lorry, and Margaret Eberhardt were there to serve customers. They were fairly busy, sparse crowd notwithstanding. Ray sat slicing a giant pickle, which he had taken from an old-fashioned pickle barrel, and combining the slices with squares of cheddar cheese, which he cut from a large block.
“This is our own invention,” he said. “Try one.” Which I did, and promptly bought a half-pound of cheese (and three tomatoes).
The booth was loaded with displays of tomatoes, butter and sugar corn, and every kind of robust-looking vegetable and fruit you could name (the plums looked especially scrumptious) as well as row upon row of canned-at-the-farm jams, relishes and sauces.
“We have just under 30 acres at 121Blakeman Road, five minutes off Route 8’s Exit 40,” Ray said, slicing. “Our employees are mostly members of the extended family.”
The Twin Farms website notes that there is a farm store at the location, too, open seven days a week, May through November. Lorry and Margaret do the canning, day after day, at the farm. “The guys do all the picking,” they said.
“Fair season is almost here,” Ray said. “We’ll have our booth at about seven of them this year.” “Five,” corrected Lorry. Every person who staffs a marketplace booth, (or any booth, I have always found), has a story; good ones, usually. Young Margaret Eberhardt, for example. She is small and full of energy. She played point guard on the Thomaston High girls’ basketball team, graduating in 2013.
“I went to Post College for a year,” she said, “and then took a year off to join the U.S. Army reserves. I committed for six years. This year I transferred to Western Connecticut State. I’m playing basketball down there, for Western.”
That’s a sample of what I like about the Torrington’s street fair. I’m not going to fret about its future, either.
This mayor knows her stuff, and I believe when all the conferences have been held, appointments made and ideas sifted, the Marketplace will be back in full array.