Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 9, 1994                   TAG: 9407280033
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THERE'S A MARKET FOR THE MARKET

In operation since the 19th century, the City Market is a carefully nurtured remnant of a time when farm-fresh produce was the order of the day and consumers did their shopping downtown rather than in suburban shopping malls.

But the City Market may also be a harbinger of the future. In putting the market area at one end of a proposed railside park, city officials are wisely trying to build on an already-valuable asset that could become more so.

With their convenience, breadth of selection and high-volume cost-cutting, supermarkets aren't about to vanish, of course. They have contributed to improvements in the American diet by making more food products available more inexpensively.

But the less standardized, albeit seasonal, products offered at farmer's markets are becoming a growth industry as well; nationwide, farmers' markets are gaining attention both for the niches they are coming to occupy in local shopping patterns and for their potential as tourist attractions.

Certainly, Roanoke's City Market is thriving. It is a downtown highlight not just for curious tourists, but for busy natives in search of fresh fruit, a plotted flower or a decent jar of honey.

Nationally, according to Nancy Harmon Jenkins, in an article in the July-August issue of "Eating Well," the number of farmers' markets is growing. There are now about 1,800 in the United States, she reports, an increase of about 50 from the year before.

And at least one authority lists Roanoke's as among the 20 best of those 1,800.

Judith Olney, author of "Judith Olney's Farm Market Cookbook," does not include Roanoke's market among her Top 10 nationally. But in the July/August issue of Cooking Light magazine, she does list the Roanoke City Farmers' Market among the second 10 "worth mentioning and visiting."

If farmers' markets were all the same, they wouldn't be the attractions that they are.

Perhaps reflecting the relative homogeneity of this region's population, for example, the market in Roanoke doesn't offer the ethnic variety of foodstuffs offered at some markets elsewhere. It can't offer a view of the sea, or specialize in locally grown seafood.

On the other hand, the local specialties here - peaches, apples, garden vegetables and the like - are as good as anywhere. And the downtown location, authentic historicity and (soon) proximity to a conference hotel make Roanoke's market unmatched by many others. Roanoke has done well to preserve and nourish its City Market; the task now is to figure out how to take fullest advantage of it.