After more than three decades as good neighbors, a feud is developing between two community treasures.

The Southern Appalachian Historical Association and the Watauga County Farmers’ Market are struggling for control of one of the most prime assets in Boone —available parking spaces.

With Appalachian State University renting the parking lot on Horn in the West Drive, and with the increasing popularity of ASU football games and the farmer’s market, Saturdays have become a free-for-all and the farmer’s market vendors are saying business could suffer.

In 2007, Sullivan Wilkes posed with sunflowers his father grew at Faith Mountain Farm in Creston. The Wilkes family maintains a booth at the Watauga County Farmer’s Market. File photo by Marie Freeman

Billy Ralph Winkler, a long-time SAHA board member, said last fall some of the farmers’ market members expressed concern about students parking in the lot. Winkler said SAHA agreed in writing to negotiate for the right to keep the spaces open during Saturdays. For more than 30 years, the spaces had been simultaneously leased to the farmers’ market and ASU, but students didn’t use the lot to commute to the school. Most of those renting spaces were sophomores living on campus, and they needed to park on the weekends, Winkler said.

The problem arose because students didn’t use the lot as a “commuter lot,” parking during weekdays and walking to campus. Instead, it became permanent parking, a problem exacerbated when attendance at ASU football games swelled.

Joe Martin, farmers’ market president, said the agreement with SAHA to remove student cars during Saturdays was in writing, and SAHA and ASU were late in making negotiations to place that condition in the leases of students renting the spaces. Either way, Martin said parking will be a problem.

“It’s a matter of do we die quick or slow,” Martin said. “We are filling up the parking lot every Saturday. We’re running between 1,500 and 2,200 people on Saturdays and 400 on Wednesdays. More and more the board is feeling, ‘Why should we have to move?’ For 33 years, we’ve been there building up a clientele. We’re Boone’s town square.”

Martin said if 250 spaces were leased to ASU, there would only be 29 left, and current negotiations are to decrease the number of spaces leased to ASU to 150, with the farmer’s market paying additional money for the difference.

For decades, SAHA had the right to lease a maximum amount of spaces to ASU, with no set amount reserved for the farmer’s market, Winkler said.

“They’ve never sold that maximum amount,” said Winkler. “We had agreed to decrease that to 250. In further negotiations, we’ve thrown out the possibility of decreasing that even more.”

“Five or six years ago, it wasn’t a big problem because there was room for ASU,” said Richard Boylan, a farmer’s market board member. “We are very nervous about what happens in the fall when 250 more cars show up.”

“After members of SAHA board went before the town and basically said we had to leave, we wanted to make our views known,” Boylan added, though he said he was speaking personally and not as a board representative.

“Many of us who have been in SAHA for many years treasure the farmer’s market,” Winkler said. “We aren’t asking for anything more. SAHA needs the rental income. We’re trying our best to compromise. I don’t know if the leadership of the farmer’s market is going to be agreeable to anything besides us not renting to ASU.”

“It is the SAHA property right, though,” Winkler said, noting the farmer’s market lease grants use of the parking lot but it has never been an exclusive right. “We can’t afford to give up thousands of dollars worth of funding for the farmer’s market, and we don’t have it to give. We’re still working with ASU. Any contract has to be approved by the town of Boone, which is why we’re asking them to come to the table.”

Right now, there are 279 marked spaces available. “I have to point out that, on Saturdays, many of the students moved and there were always spaces available,” Winkler said. “It has become more of a problem in recent years as the market has grown and more people have come to ASU football games.”

“My best-case hope is SAHA would continue to lease spaces to ASU students and that the lease says the students would have to leave the spaces open (on Saturday),” Boylan said. “We have overfilled that parking lot at times, with a combination of students, customers and visitors.”

In a recent letter to the editor, Boylan attributed the good location as one of the reasons for the market’s success. He said SAHA was threatening the market through its “greed,” leasing the parking lot to ASU while also leasing the market vendor booths, with no specified spaces, to the farmer’s market.

Boylan hopes a resolution can be reached so the two groups can remain community partners. “I’d ask SAHA to live up to its mission of preserving Appalachian culture, because farming is part of that culture,” he said.

Winkler said ASU had agreed to not direct student drivers, who have to vacate on-campus lots during football games, to the Horn in the West lot.

“We and ASU have agreed to fewer cars and no extra cars on game days and it doesn’t appear the farmer’s market is agreeable to that,” he said.

Martin said the farmer’s market would rather bypass SAHA in negotiations. “We want to lease directly from the city (Boone) so we aren’t affected by SAHA’s budget problems,” he said. “We’re willing to pay the city what we’re paying SAHA. The sentiment on the board is we don’t want to move and we don’t think we should have to. That piece of property doesn’t belong to SAHA. It belongs to the town and the community.”

The farmer’s market pays nearly $5,000 a year for use of the vending spaces at the market. “Most farmer’s markets are usually provided by the community rent free because it’s a community service,” Martin said.

Martin said the lease grants the market use of the parking lot, and he agreed the problem had only developed as the market grew popular. “We should have the parking lot during times when the market is open,” he said. “ASU has compromised to 150 spaces, but in our view SAHA has not compromised at all. We offered to go up some on our rent. That was our compromise. We pay more than a fair rent for the few hours and weeks we run.”

Martin said the farmer’s market board is developing a plan to approach the town of Boone and ask to lease the parking space from the town.

“My biggest concern right now is that the goodwill that has existed for so long between SAHA and the farmer’s market has been damaged, and I can only hope that good will can be restored,” Winkler said.