Summers in downtown Lewiston will be different this year as the Lewiston Farmers Market moves to Saturday afternoons to coincide with a new concert series.
Alive After Five will be replaced by the concert series Sound Downtown from June to August. Where Alive After Five was a weekday event that took place once a month, Sound Downtown will take place every Saturday throughout the summer.
“We felt this would benefit the downtown businesses more, partly by creating a regular habit of people coming downtown on Saturdays,” says Breanne Durham, Beautiful Downtown Lewiston Executive Director. Sound Downtown will take the best elements of Alive After Five — live music, food and a family-friendly atmosphere — and make them a weekly occurrence, she says.
The Farmers Market will be from 4:30-7:30 p.m. at the D Street Parking Lot, overlapping with Sound Downtown from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Brackenbury Square. The two events will kick off June 8, the same day as the Lewiston City Library’s grand opening at 411 D Street.
Sound Downtown and the market will not involve closing Main Street, says Durham. She says the decision not to close the street has been popular with downtown businesses. If an event lasted three hours, the street had to be closed for six to allow for set up and take down.
Alive After Five was discontinued for a number of reasons, Durham says. A weekly concert event has been a goal for the organization for a long time and they don’t have the capacity to do both well, she says. In addition, Clarkston also does Alive After Five and so they wanted to try something else. Moving the Lewiston Farmers Market from Wednesdays to Saturdays has been a request from customers and vendors for a number of years, Durham says. Not wanting to compete with Clarkston’s Farmers Market which takes place Saturday mornings, the Lewiston market will happen Saturday afternoons. Durham says the change has already generated new vendors for Lewiston’s market who have voiced that it is convenient for them to pack up after a morning market in the region and come to Lewiston for the afternoon.
The group is seeking musicians and vendors for this summer’s events. The Vendor Information Packet and Application can be found at www.beautifuldowntownlewiston.org. Musicians wishing to perform at Sound Downtown can contact Beautiful Downtown Lewiston at (208) 790-1148.
