07-14-2003, 12:10 PM
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El Destructor II
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Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: 11th& Sansom
Posts: 23,291
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Kensington
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/business/6297380.htm
Quote:
Posted on Mon, Jul. 14, 2003
The Job | Community via food
Elvin Padilla is making his dreams for El Mercado come true.
By Jane M. Von Bergen
Inquirer Staff Writer
DAVID SWANSON / Inquirer
Elvin Padilla, 39, runs El Mercado, a Kensington farmers’ market housed in what used to be an abandoned warehouse. He usually purchases from a wholesaler, but a farmer committed to selling at the market.
Not that Amish farmer Jacob Y. Beiler is a fish, but Elvin Padilla needed to reel him in.
Padilla, 39, manages El Mercado, a fledgling food and farmers' market in a former abandoned warehouse in Kensington. The building is modest, but the dreams of the Norris Square Civic Association, the nonprofit group that owns it, are big:
Fledgling entrepreneurs will set up booths along the sides of the narrow building, in an effort to build prosperity in an impoverished neighborhood. Diverse communities will unite over tosdados, neighbors can buy healthy Pennsylvania farm-picked fruits and vegetables in an area where such food is often scarce.
The dreams are big, and it is Padilla's job as the Norris Square Civic Association's economic development director to make them happen.
Una problema.
Padilla had no actual farmer for his farmers' market.
Beiler, who showed up in his Amish hat and beard last Wednesday, seemed interested. And as the El rumbled by overhead, he took notes, watching what sold, watching who came, figuring his odds.
Padilla's days vary tremendously. Sometimes he presents proposals to foundations. If it is a group that funds food projects, he is a market manager. If the group funds economic development, well then, economic developer is his title for the day.
He works with bankers, lawyers, code-enforcement officers, and with a young Moroccan woman who walked into El Mercado Wednesday, wanting to cook Mediterranean food. "I can cook French and Spanish food too," she said.
Once a week, he faxes a produce order to merchants at the Food Distribution Center. Sometimes he travels to Lancaster County to buy fresh produce from an wholesaler. He knows that fruit outsells vegetables.
At El Mercado and on his desk in the faded brownstone that houses the Norris Square Civic Association, Padilla keeps photographs of El Mercado as it was two years ago.
There's the abandoned warehouse in a lot overgrown with weeds and trash. There's the burned-out corner where someone built a fire.
Now, nearly $1 million later, the building is cleaned and painted, with a spacious outdoor deck for dining or concerts. Just down the aisle from a food booth run by a woman from El Salvador, a Mexican eatery draws a weekly crew of photographers from Center City. Two women sell eggplants, oranges and asparagus
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good article. he's right about entrepreneurs.
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