By Reed Vreeland
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

CLINTON HILL— On Sunday, the first of five Urban Arts Markets was held on Myrtle Avenue in Clinton Hill. The day-long event was harried by intermittent rainstorms, the first of which struck before the market began at noon. The second storm broke around 3 p.m., forcing the market and all of its vendors to close shop just as the event had begun to attract more pedestrian traffic.

But during a three-hour window of sunshine on Sunday, the market (situated right by Pratt Institute) flourished and offered a preview of what organizers expect during the next four events. The vendors and perusing shoppers displayed a carefree, summer spirit that seemed irrepressible. Music flowed from the stage, and small local businesses filled the tents with a tantalizing and colorful variety of handcrafts, accessories and art.

According to the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership, which planned the event in coordination with the arts group Afro Punk and BAM, the final tally of vendors was 38, well over the organizers’ target number.

The Urban Arts Market’s principal aim is to help foster and grow small local businesses and to bring shoppers to Myrtle Avenue. The vast majority of the vendors don’t have existing retail space from which to sell their wares. Instead of concentrating on one high-profile happening, the event’s organizers decided on a series of markets throughout the summer designed to draw enough business to allow the most successful of the vendors a chance to launch their own retail space on Myrtle Avenue.

Although BAM. has been a crucial partner in marketing and advertising the Urban Arts Market, the bulk of the organizing was engineered by the Partnership and Afro Punk.

“The idea is to foster micro-entrepreneurs,� said Michael Blaise Backer, executive director of the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership, which was founded in 1999.

When asked to comment on the community’s reception of Sunday’s market, Backer said, “From the residents in the area we got extremely positive reaction — maybe one negative reaction on noise, but that’s what you get with live music.�

At the peak of the storm, as the event’s organizers were scrambling to keep the tents from flying away, one of the directors, Meredith Phillips Almeida, put the rained-out event in perspective. “As you can see, this is not the best situation, but this kind of thing happens. That’s why we have five events.� Early last fall, the Partnership received a two-year grant from Deutsche Bank, which helped make the Urban Arts Market possible. The bank has an Arts and Enterprise program, which aims to cultivate and use the arts to help spur economic development and community building.

Another one of the Partnership’s ambitious goals is to make the section of Myrtle Avenue by Pratt University into a pedestrian-only zone. The Partnership’s members have been working with the Department of Transportation (DOT) and its initiative of creating up to eight “Pedestrian Plazas� over the next year. These plazas are meant to be the site of urban markets, bazaars and fairs and would be blocked off to automobile traffic on a year-round basis. Due to a lack of resources and an abundance of applicants, there are many neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn jockeying to be the site of one of the DOT’s pedestrian zones.

According to Blaise Backer, the series of Urban Arts Markets will be able to, “show what is possible on a part time basis, and give people an idea of what it could be on a full time basis.�

Despite the Partnership’s desire to have Myrtle Avenue become a Pedestrian Plaza, Backer acknowledges that it will be difficult to achieve. “We are sort of at a disadvantage, we are really going to have to make the case that this is what the community wants, and what is needed.�

Regardless of the prospect of establishing a permanent pedestrian-zone, the Urban Arts Market has succeeded in generating energy and anticipation within the community. “People are excited about the one in two weeks. They are anxious for activities like this to come to the avenue,� Backer commented. The next event, planned for August 10, is expected to have more vendors, more food, and more live music. All of the live performers that were halted last Sunday have agreed to play at the next event. Hopefully, the rain won’t make an appearance.

For more information about the Urban Arts Market go to www.myrtle avenue.org.

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