John Silveira arrived at the Riverside Arts Market about 7 a.m. Saturday when the space under the Fuller Warren Bridge was still fairly empty.
The popular public market didn’t start for several hours, but Silveira likes to arrive early. It allows him plenty of time to prepare, along with a few moments just to sit back and imagine.
“You can kind of close your eyes and dream, ‘This is what it’s going to look like,’” said Silveira, the market’s senior manager hired last week.
Over the next couple of hours, vendors started arriving for the 10 a.m. open time.
Staff mostly greeted them — Silveira in his first market didn’t have as much of a chance to do so. He was busy sweeping. He’s a pretty hands-on kind of guy when it comes to details.
By about noon, though, it didn’t matter. The skies opened up and the typical Jacksonville summer afternoon downpour was in full effect — all 15 minutes of it.
Silveira is familiar with rain dampening market days. As a longtime farmers’ market director in California, rain was often the death knell for events there. Here, however, it was just a blip.
“We kind of have this roof here,” said Silveira, looking up to the overpass as the sounds of cars whir along. “That’s pretty nice.”
The vast riverfront public space, popularity of the market and opportunity for growth are factors that have Silveira calling the Riverside Arts Market a “dream job.”
And he knows a thing or two about such markets.
After a Navy career on the West Coast, Silveira wanted to do something just as meaningful but in a different way.
He took a job with a citrus farmer, heading the logistics and marketing department that moved goods from farm to warehouse to a half-dozen certified farmers’ markets in the San Francisco Bay area.
The early 1990s saw such markets as economic development tools, creating community events where people spent their money on locally sourced products.
After a few years, he took his career a step further when he was hired by the Pacific Coast Farmers’ Market, which started as six area markets and peaked at about 73.
During his 23 years there, Silveira spent more than a decade as executive director of the largest such organization in the U.S.
But after growing an organization with that many parts and that much variety, he wanted to be closer to family.
Silveira and his wife, Vicky, moved to Florida to be near to his sister in Alachua County. He actually grew up in South Florida through his teenage years before joining the Navy.
Now, he was back and the two ended up moving to St. Augustine early last year.
He worked at a local nonprofit foodbank before Vicki saw an online posting about the Riverside Arts Market position — a perfect fit for someone with Silveira’s background.
The two had been to the market as patrons since moving to Florida and liked what they saw.
“It’s a dream come true for me, really,” he said.
In California, he was in charge of so many different markets. Here, he can concentrate on just one that’s become integrated with the local scene and supported through several public-private partnerships.
Peak season is about October, when 85-100 vendors set up shop each Saturday. Silveira wants to meet them and customers to find out how they’d like to see the market grow.
Until then, he doesn’t want to make any commitments except to add more of an educational component about local farmers and producers to further engage customers.
He wants the market to get even better. Not necessarily bigger just yet, but better.
Silveira believes with his background, he’s the right guy for the market. And the market is the right place for him, too.
Despite the rain, his first Saturday wasn’t a washout. Even during the downpour, cars were dropping people off.
Maybe he didn’t envision it like that at 7 a.m., but Silveira will still take it.
“That’s a good sign,” he said.
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