Before Scale House Market welcomed shoppers, the property helped supply the materials used to build the surrounding city. The 50-acre site at Eighth and Havana had been a mining operation and an asphalt plant. Its next purpose would take years of planning, a partnership shaped by food-access work, and a decision to give an existing industrial property a different future.
Friends of the Market grows out of that longer story. To understand the campaign, it helps to understand why the market was built: to give local food a dependable home, farmers and food businesses practical support, and the community a place to learn alongside the people who feed it.
Seeing a different future for the Quarry
The Spokane Conservation District purchased the property in 2017. Over the following 18 months, the district worked with community members and specialists on a ten-year campus master plan. Conservation, technology, education, and public use would help shape what became the Quarry Campus.
By 2019, a renovated building housed district offices and a nature-based preschool. The Aspen Partnership Building followed, creating space for organizations working on related community and sustainability needs. Scale House Market became another part of that transformation, placing food and agricultural education within a campus already devoted to stewardship. The district’s Quarry history traces that progression.
A partnership rooted in feeding people
Four Roots brought experience from a different kind of urgent work. Founded in 2021, the woman-veteran-owned business sourced and distributed locally and regionally produced food to people facing food insecurity. Its relationship with the Spokane Conservation District developed through pandemic food-access programming and its owner’s internship with Vets on the Farm.
Those connections led to a shared interest in a more resilient local food system. A permanent market offered a way to carry that work into a setting where farmers, food businesses, and customers could build continuing relationships. Four Roots would bring its experience in food production, preparation, market operations, and business management to the partnership. Its account of the market’s origins places those earlier relationships at the center of the idea.
That approach remains visible in Four Roots’ broader mission. The business connects food access with opportunities for producers, education, and regional distribution, including rural and Tribal communities. Helping people obtain food and helping farmers reach customers are related parts of the same work. Four Roots’ mission explains that connection.
Turning the idea into a working market
A 2022 feasibility study, funded by Washington’s Community Economic Revitalization Board, helped move the market from an idea toward a buildable project. State capital allocations in 2023 and 2024 provided $1 million toward construction, with support from Legislative District 4.
The project brought together the district, Four Roots, designers, builders, and financial supporters. Olson Projects led architectural design, and Halme Cascade General Contracting managed construction. BECU became the premier sponsor, alongside support from organizations including Avista, STCU, AgWest Farm Credit, Forster Financial, and the Johnston-Fix Foundation.
The market opened to the public on May 31, 2025. In the district’s opening announcement, Director Vicki Carter connected the project to year-round food access and a consistent sales channel for family farmers. An existing building had been adapted for a new use, and the Scale House name carried its history forward.
UCRCD helped assemble and administer the funding behind the market. That work complements the other partners’ responsibilities: the Spokane Conservation District owns the Quarry Campus, and Four Roots operates Scale House Market. Each contributes a different part of what it takes to move a community project from construction into everyday use.
Making the market part of everyday life
Opening the doors was a milestone. Getting people to return, meet the vendors, and make local food part of their routines required another kind of work.
Miles Bergsma began working with the market on its storytelling and digital presence in summer 2025. His early strategy identified a clear transition: move beyond the opening announcement and help people understand why they would come back throughout the year. The focus would be the vendors themselves, their products and stories, seasonal food, and the experiences happening at the market.
That direction reflected a practical concern. A new building can attract curiosity, but ongoing relationships give shoppers reasons to return. Showing the people behind a product can help customers recognize a business when they encounter it on the shelf. Explaining a class or a market event can make a first visit feel easier to plan.
Bergsma later used the Quarry’s transformation as a theme in his community storytelling: a property once associated with material leaving the land could now be understood through what it contributed to the people around it. The market made that idea tangible through food, education, and a shared gathering place.
Learning belongs beside the food
Today, the indoor mercantile and seasonal outdoor market connect shoppers with regional produce, meat, dairy, baked goods, and other locally made products. Brittany Tyler, CEO of Four Roots, describes its purpose around food security, education, and a connection to local agriculture.
The educational work gives that purpose a practical form. Kids in the Kitchen classes help children develop food skills. Local chefs have room to explore ideas and collaborate. The on-site relationship with the Washington Small Business Development Center connects vendors with business advising and resources. These are ways to help people participate in the food system as learners and business owners as well as customers. The market’s own introduction brings those activities together.
The market could also become a food-systems stop within Connected to Place, the educational program being developed by UCRCD and Spokane Storytime. In planning discussions during August and September 2026, the team considered how a Quarry field trip could connect outdoor learning with lunch and a conversation about food at Scale House Market. That possibility would let students move from learning about the land to considering how it feeds their community. It remains part of the developing program, rather than an established school offering.
Where Friends of the Market fits
Friends of the Market supports the continuing work behind this place. Its priorities include access to fresh local food, support for small farmers and food businesses, hands-on cooking education, employment and entrepreneurship opportunities, and waste reduction and sustainability.
UCRCD serves as the campaign’s fiscal sponsor. Contributions are made to UCRCD, which issues donation receipts and year-end statements and retains discretion and control over contributed funds. The official Friends of the Market campaign offers one-time and recurring giving.
The story is still developing. The Quarry’s conversion created the setting; the farmers, food businesses, educators, shoppers, and supporters give it an ongoing purpose. Friends of the Market is a way for the community to help sustain that purpose beyond the opening celebration and into the market’s next chapter.
