Everyone agrees that the Ann Arbor Farmers Market is badly in need of improvements, namely more covered stall space for vendors, an enclosed space for the winter market, and repairs to the gutters.

However, there is plenty of disagreement about the best solution. The market manager and the city’s Public Market Advisory Commission are proposing a new building at an estimated cost of $850,000. A strong contingent of vendors call that overkill. They say the building wouldn’t be big enough for their winter needs and would reduce stall space and parking year-round. They suspect the hidden goal is to create a rental space for private events.

“The existing structure was put up during the Works Progress Administration” during the Great Depression, says market manager Sarah DeWitt, making the case for change. DeWitt estimates that about a third of vendors responded to a spring 2014 email survey about market improvements, and nearly half of them listed more covered stall space, enclosed winter market space, and new gutters as their top priorities. A separate survey of customers found support for more stalls, a winter enclosure, and community space.

The eighty-by-fifty-foot building, designed by Kohler Architecture of Monroe, would fill the open lot facing Fourth Ave. and stretch across a driveway to take over the tip of the market’s short middle arm. Overhead doors on all sides would be open in warm weather, making room for forty-two vendors. During the cold months, with the doors closed, the architects estimate it would accommodate fifty-eight in smaller spaces. (According to the market website, about thirty vendors currently attend the Saturday winter market from January through March.)

“One of the reasons we need enclosed space in the winter is because more farmers are operating four-season businesses and need outlets for those products, and they can’t sell delicate greens in minus-twenty-degree wind chills,” DeWitt says.

“I’m very excited for it,” says Paul Martin of Pure Harvest Pesto. “I’m looking forward to coming year-round. It will attract more people, and that’s a good thing for the market.”

Pat Shockley of Plymouth’s The Pasta Shop agrees. “I’d love anything inside,” she says when asked at a cold Saturday market in November. “I’ve seen the plans. I’d use it.”

The plans seem more popular among vendors who sell prepared food and need only a single stall. It’s the longtime vendors, who sell large amounts of goods year-round from multiple stalls, who object the most.

“It’s a waste of a million dollars,” says Jan Upston of Wasem Fruit Farm, whose family has been selling fruit and baked goods at the market for over sixty years. “First it was $500,000, then $600,000. It just keeps escalating.

“How will they keep that up if they can’t even keep this in repair?” she asks, pointing to a large hole in the asphalt behind her stall.

“We wouldn’t use it, because we’d be limited to an itsy-bitsy teeny stall, and we’d have to keep everything in our truck.”

Debra Marx, who sells handmade jewelry, agrees. “For a fraction of the amount being spent, we could upgrade the existing structure with love and winterize the whole main aisle” with enclosures and radiant heat, Marx says. That’s what was done at the Toledo Farmers’ Market in 2007.

“It cost them $70,000 to do it,” says vendor Janna Field of Dexter, who was one of a group of vendors who toured the Toledo market. “The area they winterized was about the length of the [Ann Arbor market’s] middle aisle.”

While Ann Arbor has discussed such a solution in the past, according to the market website it was rejected because winterizing with pull-down shutters “comes with an unknown cost for retrofitting” the WPA-vintage structure.

“We wanted covered space and a winter market, but no one asked if we wanted a new building,” says Field. A vendor since 1994, Field sells bedding plants, flowers, and herbs from three stalls that would be eliminated to make way for the new structure. She says that in her own informal survey of forty vendors, 92 percent said they “don’t want a new building, won’t use it, and may leave the market as a result of being pushed out of the spaces they’ve spent decades of seniority to get.”

Donna Puehler of Grandma’s Kitchen in Delta, Ohio, would see her two stalls eliminated, too. “This is a farmers’ market, not a party place,” says Puehler, who’s sold eggs and baked goods for nineteen years. “I come all winter, and I won’t use it. It won’t be big enough for everything.”

Joan Ernst, who’s sold meat at the market for twelve years, agrees. “It will be nice to have an enclosure, but it won’t work for me. I have too much stuff,” she says.

The barn-like structure would also provide some outdoor seating and would be available to rent when the market isn’t in operation. Early planning included extensive discussions of using the building for weddings and other events, even possibly adding a second story to maximize rental space. However, DeWitt downplays that as a consideration now: “The plan for the new structure is market operations. That’s really our focus.

“We’ve had weddings here at the existing market, so I’m not going to say someone might not rent the building for a wedding, but that’s not the purpose.”

DeWitt estimates that 75 percent of the written comments she’s received on the plan from market visitors are positive, and says she’s received letters of support from vendors too.

Some vendors say they haven’t yet made up their minds. “I come year-round, and I’m looking forward to improvements,” says produce grower Rob Mac-Kerchen of Garden Works, a vendor since 1991. “I want positive change for the market, but I’m not sure I’d use it.”

The new building is slated for construction in 2017. While $675,000 in Farmers Market and Parks and Recreation funds are earmarked for the project, DeWitt says, more funding will have to be obtained before work starts.

The market commission is currently forming two advisory committees, one for vendors and one for the community, and public comments are welcomed at pmac@a2gov.org.