Options offered for Fifth Street’s Farmers Market … just not a roof
Plus, city buys old Pop’s B&K site, lines up repairs for rough tracks on South Street.
The possibility of a shelter-type structure over parts of Fifth Street, floated a few years ago as a potential protection for the Lafayette Farmers Market and other events, was scrapped in a set of scenarios laid out Thursday for two blocks of downtown.
Instead, three options offered to the Lafayette Redevelopment Commission focused largely on what to do with parking on Fifth Street, between Main and Columbia streets, and how that space might be used for plaza-like areas and more room for farmers market vendors and events on the side of the street featuring the Knickerbocker Saloon, Bistro 501 and Sweet Revolution Bake Shop.
The $39,000 study, commissioned in 2025, also looked at access to Fifth Street, between Main and Ferry streets, by vehicles and pedestrians, tree planting, and amenities for events and programming, including the Lafayette Farmers Market.
As for a canopy over Fifth Street, which appeared in a 2024 study that looked at spaces with potential for redevelopment in downtown Lafayette?
“We kind of stripped away the overhead shelter portion,” Katie Clark, a consultant with design firm MKSK, told the redevelopment commission.
“That really came from some of our input from vendors and thinking about what they needed most,” Clark said. “What they told us they needed was just more gathering space, more queuing space for their customers and the people visiting events. And it was less about them feeling protected.”
Dennis Carson, Lafayette’s economic development director, said the study comes as the city contemplates that at some point it must repair and replace failing brick pavers laid in the Fifth Street farmers market area three decades ago. Those pavers are remnants of a portion of the decades-long Lafayette Railroad Relocation Project that included pulling up tracks that ran down the center of Fifth Street after the final train rolled through in July 1994.
“This gives us an opportunity to look at that area so we maximize that,” Carson said. “As you know, the farmers market has really expanded the last couple of years and doing very, very well. So, we went through the process to look at what could be done in that area to facilitate the market and other events.”
Clark said the new study began with interviews and surveys of business owners on Fifth Street and with vendors about what was and wasn’t working.
She said those conversations turned up needs for public restrooms, better ways to point people to available parking in the downtown, better access to vendors’ booths during the farmers market, more seating and expanding what the report called “limited gathering and queuing areas near booths.” (The surveys turned up only 50% support for a permanent canopy over Fifth Street, according to the report.)
Clark said the three scenarios contemplated in the study focused most heavily on the block between Main and Columbia streets, because it offered more room between buildings lining the street than in the block between Main and Ferry streets.
Here’s a look at the three possible layouts for Fifth Street offered in the study.
