Dallas Farmer's Market

Dallas Observer's Jim Schutze just published an article about the Dallas Farmers Market, and I agree with him on most of his points. Here's my response and solution:

The Dallas Farmer's Market is a giant boondoggle of crummy real estate where you can hardly get any decent local food, prepared food or crafts. From my experience in working and visiting farmer's markets I think they fit into two categories:
A- Permanent City Fixture (see Reading Terminal, Pike Place etc...) These markets are open every (or almost) every day, and attract a lot of tourist, shopping, and eating traffic rather than just people buying food. This requires more space for restaurants and crafts, as well as a commitment to advertising the market as a tourist attraction.

B- Produce Market (see Portland, Ithaca, Coppell etc...) These markets are open just one or a few days a week, and are more for locals buying food (mostly produce) to cook with. To succeed here you need to differentiate from grocery stores by focusing on local produce and community connections.

Dallas is following neither of these plans. The indoor pavilion does have a couple craft booths, but is pretty empty. Shed 1 is supposed to be local produce only, but there is still a separate sticker designation for local vendors and not all of them in 1 have it (I don't understand this...). Also the local merchants are overshadowed by the large amount of produce in the other sheds that got diverted from a grocery store and is being sold at a huge mark-up (who buys pineapple at a North American farmers market?). The restaurant options are very limited. Because the transition to a Permanent City Fixture would be so difficult, the market should instead focus on becoming a viable local produce market.

Here's the plan:
-Open the market only on the weekends and maybe one afternoon/evening a week.
-Only allow vendors to sell produce grown within a 100 miles of Dallas
-Designate shed 3 or 4 for food trucks- an easy way to increase prepared food options, and attract food truck patrons to the market (many of them don't have plans on a saturday morning anyway)
-Add cooking demonstrations. There are already cooking classes w/ area chefs organized, why not have them (or others) give a demonstration with only market products used? This will show people how to use their newly bought food and make it more of an experience to go to the market.
-Increase the scope and awareness of special market days. There are apparently already special events at the market, but I can't say I've ever heard of them...

All these things will increase the density of visitors to the market and help deal w/ the problems of the homeless walking through, as well as the market seeming like an empty blight next to the business district. Or we can just nuke it...