‘An extensive project’: Charlottetown Farmers’ Market bouncing back after devastating fire

Find out how vendors and customers are adjusting after a fire damaged the Charlottetown Farmers' Market last month.

It’s been three weeks since a Christmas Day fire heavily damaged the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market. Since then, the vendors have moved to a temporary location, but they’re looking ahead to what the future holds.

Travis Cummiskey is the owner of Glen Lake Pasture Farm in Tarantum, P.E.I., and the president of the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market Co-operative. He woke up on Christmas morning to open presents with his wife and two young children when he got the call about the fire.

“(It) started about three in the morning, so by the time I got there it was out. And we were standing around talking to firefighters and observing things. It started, the primary damage, is in my corner of the market, so that made it a little extra stressful,” he says.

“The smoke damage is throughout the building and most of the equipment and counters and stuff aren’t worth saving.”

The market plans to rebuild using the existing building on Belvedere Avenue.

Right now, it’s being gutted.

“The first thing was to get all the vendors’ stuff out of the building, salvage what could be salvaged, and then after that it’s going to be gutted and it’s going to be redone from the studs out basically,” says Comisky.

“And any of the systems, like electrical, plumbing, all of that has to be redone as well, so it’s quite an extensive project even if we are saving the building.”

Comisky says the work will luckily be covered by insurance.

“Insurance is paying to repair the building, as well as putting us up in the meantime in our temporary location, and there is also some help for the operations of the market itself,” he says.

“The vendors, on the other hand, have not been as lucky. Most of them, for their contents are not insured, so even trying to get that stuff out of there has been a challenge.”

The former Sporting Intensions building on North River Road in Charlottetown is now the new temporary home for the market.

“We call the building Creekside Crossing. We had our first market there last Saturday and some of the vendors that are easier to accommodate have been set up and then there’s others that maybe they need more time, or we need to build out more facilities there for them to be able to operate,” Comisky says.

“This wasn’t a food service space in the past, so we’re adding sinks, electrical and even a hood vent to accommodate our food vendors.”

As for the fire itself, Comisky says the cause is inconclusive at this point, but investigators believe it started outside of the building.

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