Sudbury Market to stay at downtown Elm Place mall for the summer

The Sudbury Market will continue to run on Saturdays at the Elm Place mall with an indoor and outdoor component, starting on June 1.

Erin Rowe, the Sudbury Market's board chair, said vendors will continue to set up at the corner of York and Paris Streets on Thursdays, but Elm Place is expected to become a permanent home for the weekend market.

The market first set up shop at the Elm Place downtown mall last October.

"For a couple years now, the goal of the market has been to find a permanent home," said Rowe.

"It's been very hard. We were at Science North for a couple years. We were at Southridge Mall for a couple years."

Despite some early concerns from patrons about parking downtown, Rowe said the location has worked out well.

The market occupies a 15,000-square-foot space in the mall, and Rowe said parking has not been an issue.

"The mall itself has 900 parking spaces," she said. 

The market was located outside the historic Elgin Street train station in the city's downtown core on Saturdays for 11 years. The city spent $1.6 million to purchase the building and surrounding property for the market in 2013.

That move was necessary when the new Laurentian University school of architecture bought the former market square building further down Elgin, which was constructed for $3 million in 2001. 

Rowe said one of the reasons they chose not to return is because of the construction expected to happen in that part of the city this summer.

She added that in 2018-19 they had 12 seasonal vendors, but now they have between 45 and 50 vendors at the new space.