LAGUNA BEACH : Farmers’ Market Will Settle Near City Hall

Having finally found a home, the popular open-air Farmers’ Market is preparing to move to a parking lot adjacent to City Hall later this month.

Since June, members of the Orange County Farm Bureau, which operates the market, have been putting up their produce stands each Saturday in the school district parking lot on Blumont Street. They will stay there until Nov. 25, when they will move to the new site at Forest and Ocean avenues.

The market has been popular in Laguna Beach, attracting 800 to 1,000 customers on a typical Saturday, manager Jennifer Griffiths said. But because of objections from neighbors in the largely residential area, the city set a Nov. 18 deadline for it to move on.

“Quite frankly, I love where we are,” Griffiths said this week. Of all the other possible locations downtown, she said, the Forest Avenue site “was the best, and this was the one we wanted.” The Farm Bureau won a one-year temporary use permit from the city in September to move to the city-owned parcel, known as the Lumberyard Parking Lot, Griffiths said, and she is hoping that it will become a permanent home for the market.

As a condition of approval, Griffiths said, the Farm Bureau had to agree not to allow cut flowers to be sold at the market. Some local florists had complained that the vendors’ sales were undercutting their own, she said.

There will be some other changes. The market is now open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. At the new location, the hours will be 8 a.m. to noon.

When it first moves to Forest Avenue, Griffiths said, its merchandise mix will likely reflect the coming holiday season.

“We’ll have in some things for the holidays, pies and more gift-type food,” she said. “It’ll be more festive.”