Hanalei Farmers Market closes

HANALEI — Vendors at the Hanalei Farmers Market got a shock Saturday when the board of Hale Halawai ‘Ohana O Hanalei, which operates the market, announced the market would close immediately until permitting issues could be resolved.

“After extensive meetings and attempts to implement other solutions to unresolved parking and permit issues, this is what we have to do,” states a letter read to vendors at a meeting Saturday.

Louisa Wooton, whose family’s Kaua‘i Kunani Dairy relies on farmers markets across the island to sell their goat milk, cheese and various produce, said the abrupt closure is a shock and a huge hit to the vendors.

“We derive 20 to 25 percent of our sales per month from that market,” she said. “My son and daughter-in-law came back (from the meeting) devastated — it was like a punch in the stomach.”

Representatives of Hale Halawai said two issues came to a head to force Saturday’s closure. One was parking for the market, which often overflows into the adjacent park, and the other is what is and isn’t allowed by the special use permit under which the market operates.

“Some members of the community don’t like what we’re doing,” Hale Halawai’s board treasurer Mal Dohrman said. “Especially parking in the park.”

Hale Halawai executive director Carol Ann Washburn said the issue isn’t cut-and-dried.

“There is still a question about the use permit,” she said. “There has been advice that we’re absolutely within it, but others have told us we’re not.”

Dohrman said other members of the community pressured the group into closing the market.

Although Hale Halawai representatives declined to name the source of that pressure, they said it was serious.

“There was a threat of legal action,” Hale Halawai board president Wicki van De Veer said.

All three Hale Halawai representatives said the county had nothing to do with the legal threat that led to the market’s closure.

“It was not the county,” Washburn said. “Everyone we’ve worked with there has been class from the very beginning.”

Washburn said she was heartbroken about having to close the market, and she fought back tears as she talked about the situation.

“We’re in the process of doing the applications; we’re doing everything we can to reopen,” she said. “The vendors have been fabulous; they’re beautiful, kind people doing everything they can to make a living.”

Dohrman said Hale Halawai might have avoided the situation, but until now there was no threat to the market’s operation.

“It was probably something we should have done a long time ago,” Dohrman said. “We were just going along and nobody raised any objections, so it wasn’t done.”

Washburn added that the group had “informal pieces in place that need to be formalized.”

She said in the meantime, she plans to bring forward a proposal to operate temporarily at Wai‘oli Town Park until the issues can be resolved.

“We’re doing everything we can with our t’s crossed and our i’s dotted to get open again,” she said.

For her part, Wooton is moving ahead. She said Nahamana Farmers Market near Kilauea has offered to take in vendors from the Hanalei Market as soon as next week.

“It might be a situation where one door closes and another one opens,” she said. “We can’t tell the goats to stop making milk; we can’t tell the avocadoes to stop growing. We’ve got to come up with a plan b, and we’ve got to come up with it fast.”