Farmers Market Putting on Ritz
The venerable Farmers Market--that comfy, kitschy hangout for locals and tourists at 3rd and Fairfax--is about to go uptown in a big way.
With a bevy of tony shops opening in mid-March on the vast and storied corner, the 68-year-old market is gearing up for some extraordinary changes. Later-than-ever hours, for one. And the likelihood of parking fees at a place where denizens have long been able to stow their vehicles free for hours on end in the open-air lot with little threat of retribution.
The prospect of such a marked cultural shift at the beloved but scruffy landmark has longtime merchants and customers abuzz.
Customers seem eager for the longer hours and the greater variety of retail options, as long as the market’s quaint character survives.
“I’m happy about it,” said Chris DeCristo, a visual effects supervisor at CBS Television City, just north of the market. “When I leave work, I’ll be able to grab something to eat.”
Laura Stegman of Westchester, lunching with her husband, Hugh, worried about the prospect of parking charges. “If we had to pay more than $1, we’d probably go somewhere else,” she said. But, she said, “we understand this land is very valuable and had to be developed.”
Opinion among vendors is split. Many see the changes as an unprecedented business opportunity. Others view the new 9 a.m.-to-9 p.m. hours (10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sundays) as a hardship for the family-run stands that give the market much of its flavor. Gone, as of mid-March, will be the days of shuttering the shop at 6:30 p.m. in winter and 7 p.m. in summer.
Regardless of their opinion, the merchants know that times are changing, just as the market’s development-minded owners for years have advised. For former Parisian Stephane Strouk, who gravitated to the market in 1993 because of its European ambience and opened his French Crepe Co. restaurant in the structure’s smallest pocket, the overhaul can’t come soon enough.
“I think it’s going to be great,” he gushed one recent afternoon. “If I could stay open 24 hours, I would do it.”
Many of the tenants, he suggested, are wary of the changes because “they’re not really, really businesspeople.
“They just want to make enough to survive,” he said.
Strouk, by contrast, has the unbridled ambitions of a natural-born entrepreneur. The French Crepe Co. started with only 115 square feet; he now has signed a lease for 7,000 square feet in the southeast corner, which would be the largest space in the original market.
On March 1, he plans to begin installing an international gourmet market, to open in June, with what he boasts will be California’s largest selection of imported cheeses, cold cuts and groceries.
In Strouk’s view, more selling space and longer hours are part of the solution to the market’s problems.
“What some tenants do not understand is their interest is the landlord’s,” Strouk said. “If we did not have this big development coming in, half the merchants would die.”
Phyllis Magee, whose family has operated Magee’s Kitchen and Magee’s House of Nuts at the market since it opened in 1934, is another merchant who welcomes the changes, anticipating a return of much of the venue’s early glory.
Years ago, she recalled, the market stayed open until 8 at night in the summers. In the 1970s, the owner and the merchants decided to open on Sundays.
But by the early 1980s, the market decided to cut back to the earlier hours that have until now been the rule, with some exceptions for merchants who have stayed open as late as 10 p.m. for late-night crowds or special events.
“I’m very excited,” Magee said. “We were getting to the point where we really needed a change.”
The attitude could not be more different on the west patio, where Charlie’s Coffee Shop does a brisk breakfast and lunch trade but fades after 3 p.m.
“We don’t like it,” Kyle Gilbert, son of owner Charlie Sue Gilbert, said of the extended hours. “We have a hard enough time finding employees to work regular hours. It’s going to be a very big hardship for us.”
Driving the Farmers Market revolution is the March 15 opening of two large developments that have been constructed in tandem at the site.
The smaller, built by A.F. Gilmore Co. for $45 million, contains 170,000 square feet and will include Cost Plus World Market, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Marmalade Cafe and the first Los Angeles location for Sur La Table, a high-end cooking supply shop.
That project is rising next to 575,000 square feet of upscale stores in the Grove at Farmers Market, a $160-million venture of Caruso Affiliated Holdings that is opening on property mostly to the east of the original market along 3rd Street.
Among occupants at the Grove will be Nordstrom, FAO Schwarz, Nike Goddess, Abercrombie & Fitch and a 14-screen multiplex theater, with a 3,500-space parking structure. A trolley will run from the Grove’s eastern edge to the Farmers Market.
Parking fees have yet to be announced at either the Grove or the market, but both developments appear to be leaning toward some period of free parking with merchant validations.
Rick Caruso, developer of the Grove, said he wanted to avoid the hefty parking tabs that some outraged customers have incurred at the new Hollywood & Highland mall in Hollywood.
“It’s a major turnoff for the consumer,” he said. “The parking needs to be convenient and reasonably priced.”
But he added that “garages are expensive to operate. If you want to operate them nicely, you have to spend the money to do that.”
Hank Hilty, Gilmore’s president and chief executive, said validations probably would be the best approach to controlling the market’s parking without annoying shoppers, especially since construction has reduced the number of open-air parking spots by several hundred. Merchants should view the changes at the Farmers Market as a plus, said Richard Giss, a partner in the retail services group at Deloitte & Touche. But he understands why some vendors are leery.
“You’d expect the Grove, by creating a greater retail presence, to help the Farmers Market,” he said.
“But there’s nothing so difficult for people to deal with as change.”
