“The only constant in life is change” -Heraclitus
The only thing I can promise you about this season is that we are going to be rapidly reacting to change, and adapting as quickly as we can to get our markets back off the ground. A few mistakes are going to be made - these are imperfect times. I appreciate your understanding as we try to get things restarted.
We are dropping Chattanooga Market Saturdays for now – those of you who registered are being refunded online (to your CC) today. Vendor interest just wasn’t sufficient to make it a good experience for our customers, so we’re going to focus on Sundays.
If you are an arts/craft vendor who signed up for Saturday, we will be offering you first-opportunity to move into a Sunday slot. Just contact Tucker at help@publicmarkets.us and he will take care of you.
Both Collegedale and Chattanooga Sunday hours will be 10am-2pm. Without food trucks being allowed to participate, and onsite food/drink discouraged altogether, it is logistically difficult to keep people hydrated with longer hours. This shift will be reevaluated once our larger festival footprint is permitted again.
Setup for all markets will begin two hours prior to the opening time. The effort/logistics required to help 50 people setup is very different than 250, so we believe arriving as little as an hour before the market open will be fine for most people.
Finally, I’ve added a half-dozen arts/crafts booths to the Sunday May 24th date, and we are removing the single date registration restriction moving forward. Everyone that wanted a spot seems to have been able to register (we indeed had an extra arts/crafts booth or two open), so it feels as though everyone was polite/fair and plenty of supply was available. That’s terrific, really.
We are trying to help everyone ease back into this crazy situation, and I’m greatly appreciate the kindness and positive attitudes everyone has exhibited. Thank you, and hopefully this will be the last major change for a few weeks.
Quick Update: River is definitely going to remain both Saturday and Sunday – interest has been strong, and indeed it’s strategically aligned with the efforts of the CVB and Aquarium marketing efforts. We’re definitely proud and grateful partners with those two organizations.