By Patrick Crowley
The Cincinnati Enquirer

FORT MITCHELL - The $10 million farmers market proposed for Covington picked up the support Thursday of a key Northern Kentucky group with clout in Frankfort.

The endorsement of the market by the Northern Kentucky Consensus Committee comes just three weeks before the Kentucky Agricultural Developmental Board votes on whether to allocate $5 million for the project.

The board is charged with doling out Kentucky's share of the federal tobacco settlement money that is earmarked to help farmers end or at least curtail their economic dependency on growing burley tobacco. The other $5 million would come from corporate and private contributions, while land in Covington on Scott Street between Sixth and Seventh streets would be purchased by the city and Kenton County.

The market would be modeled after places such as Findlay Market in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. It would offer produce and other products supplied by farmers in 10 Northern Kentucky counties.

A vote on the funding is scheduled for July 18 in Frankfort.

The consensus committee is spearheaded by the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and includes regional business, government and community leaders. The committee comes to a consensus on local projects and then lobbies the Kentucky General Assembly for state funding.

"The consensus committee represents a very large regional body of government and business leaders, and the farmers market believed the endorsement of this group would be valuable," said chamber Vice President Steve Stevens.

The committee will send a letter endorsing the project to the state within the next day or two, Stevens said.

Stevens noted that projects the committee typically backs are funded from the legislature's general fund, while the farmer's market money would come from the tobacco settlement.

The committee has been successful in the past in helping secure state tax dollars for a number of area projects, including the $40 million Northern Kentucky Convention Center, the $38 million Northern Kentucky University Science Building and the $215 million Newport on the Levee entertainment district.

The committee is also pursuing funding for an arena at Northern Kentucky University ($40 million to $45 million), land acquisition and infrastructure for the Riverfront West development site in Covington ($10 million) and a museum at Big Bone Lick state park in southern Boone County ($5 million.). The legislature will begin considering those projects in January.

E-mail pcrowley@enquirer.com