March 28, 2024 – The search is on for a new home for Live Oak Farmers Market in Santa Cruz, after failed negotiations with East Cliff Village Shopping Center—the popular Sunday market’s location for more than 22 years.
Manager Nesh Dhillon looked longingly at the shady trees and vast parking lot on a recent weekend while musicians played and the market bustled with customers scooping up the first strawberries of the year.
“It’s going to be hard to find a place as good as this,” he told EMB.
Earlier this month, landlord Swenson Builders notified the market that rent would be going up. Vendors told us they agreed to raise their fees to cover a five fold rent increase to $3,000 a month for weekly use of the lot.
But when time came to sign the new lease it turned out the market would need to move to a rear parking lot and be limited to farmers only. Prepared foods and a couple of trucks serving coffee and breakfast items are a major draw for customers, as well as a big source of revenue for the market, so that was a deal breaker.
The market was originally supposed to be out after Sunday, March 31, but today received a one-month reprieve until the end of April.
The 6-acre shopping center enjoys a privileged location close to the beach and has been slated for revitalization for over a decade under the Sustainable Santa Cruz County Plan.
Two locations are being seriously considered for the market’s new home, but Dhillon feels it’s important to remain as close to the original site as possible, for shoppers and for the Healthy Plates Rx program that is expanding to the Live Oak market for the first time this year.
“There are two promising spots, one very exciting…but we don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” he says. “We just don’t want to move to a B spot. We want an A+ spot.”
“I’m looking at the future and it will be much better. I see the blue sky ahead,” he added. “We just gotta solve this. There are a lot of farms that depend on our leadership.”
Serendipity Farms owner Jamie Collins, who also contributes to edible, worries that the uncertainty and a new location will seriously impact her business and the income of all the farmers at the market.
“I planted fields of strawberries because this is the first year we’ve been allowed to sell them at the markets, and they are just beginning to come in,” she says. “It’s just not right.”
Show your support for the Live Oak Farmers Market by showing up for its final month at East Cliff Village Shopping Center and by following the farmers as they move to a new location.
With reporting by Amber Turpin.
About the author
Deborah Luhrman is publisher and editor of Edible Monterey Bay. A lifelong journalist, she has reported from around the globe, but now prefers covering our flourishing local food scene and growing her own vegetables in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
