Take a street market, add a little bit of music, some arts and crafts and a lot of food, and you've got Urban Harvest.

Urban Harvest Video

This summer marks the third season of Urban Harvest, an open-air market featuring local artists, crafters, food vendors, farmers and entertainers.

Each Thursday through Aug. 16, downtown Bismarck will host Urban Harvest on the corner of Fourth Street and Broadway Avenue. The southern half of Fourth Street will be closed to traffic during the market hours, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

During Urban Harvest, the sidewalks to the west and south of the Wells Fargo building, 200 E. Broadway Ave, are lined with booths and the Urban Harvest stage, which offers a full day of entertainment and an evening concert from 6 to 9:30.

"The whole point is to have a community, family event where you can come downtown and enjoy food and art and music," said Ondine Baird, Urban Harvest board president.

New this year, Urban Harvest is sponsoring a Community Corner booth, which showcases a different nonprofit organization each week.

Thursday, Robin Martin of the Central Dakota Humane Society worked at the Community Corner booth, handing out CDHS's quarterly publication, "Focus on All Fours."

Urban Harvest, a nonprofit organization, works to highlight and support the local economy. All of the market's vendors and entertainers represent local businesses, artists and entertainers.

Urban Harvest executive director Ramona Redding Lopez and her friends, Carmen Hoffner, Amber Bintliff and Tracy Wanek founded Urban Harvest in the spring of 2005, hoping to boost the local economy and provide a fresh venue for the arts.

"I feel like (Urban Harvest has) really become embraced and integrated into the community," Redding Lopez said. "The word is spreading faster than we are spreading it ourselves."

"I hope everyone will come down and check us out and just enjoy the farmers' market," Baird said. "Even if you're not into arts and crafts, everybody's into food."

(Reach reporter Alyssa Schafer at 250-8264 or alyssa.schafer@;bismarcktribune.com.)