2008: The Year of the Greenmarket?

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[Photo via vipnyc's Wintermarket Flickr photoset]

On a blustery Sunday in mid-December, thousands of hungry New Yorkers and a host of local farmers convened at the southern tip of Manhattan for Wintermarket, a one-day gathering of local, sustainable food purveyors at the former Fulton Fish Market put together by group called New Amsterdam Public. The goal of the event, profiled by Kim Severson in today's New York Times, was to garner support for a permanent market in the building selling local foodstuffs. The article, in which Severson posits that 2008 "will be a pivotal year in the slow climb for such a space", goes on to detail a few other locations in the city that advocates hope will be earmarked for Greenmarkets, like Hunts Point in the Bronx and Moynihan Station in Midtown. Disappointingly, the plan to turn the second floor of the Battery Maritime Building into a gourmet marketplace has apparently been scrapped—the space will instead host food trade shoes. Perhaps 2009 will be the year of the Greenmarket? Because this Times piece doesn't make us extremely optimistic for 2008. The day where responsibly-harvested seafood and raw-milk cheeses will be the norm in NYC kitchens seems so far off.
· Hungry for a Market, but Where? [NY Times]