Quick Take
Santa Cruz Community Farmers' Markets is searching for a new home for its Sunday market in Live Oak after the nonprofit organization was unable to agree to new lease terms with property owner Swenson Builders. Sunday will be the last market at the East Cliff Village Shopping Center, where it's been held for 22 years.
The farmers market in the East Cliff Village Shopping Center in Live Oak bustles with shoppers every Sunday, eager to bring home fresh seasonal produce from a local farmer, grab breakfast or a coffee at one of its many food vendors, or just take a moment to enjoy the atmosphere and some live music. But after a disagreement over its lease, market organizers are now frantically searching for a new home.
For 22 years, Santa Cruz Community Farmers’ Markets has held a farmers market on Sunday mornings in the parking lot of the shopping center. But market organizers have decided to walk away from the site after their lease runs out at the end of March. Organizers were unable to renegotiate a new lease with property owner Swenson Builders, a development company based in San Jose. This Sunday, March 31, will be the last market at that location.
The market has operated on a month-to-month lease for almost two decades. Earlier in March, Swenson Builders presented the market with a new lease that included a significant rent increase and terms that would have limited the types of vendors at the market.
“They presented terms where we could not function as a market, basically,” said Sandra Ward, the president of the market’s governing board and owner of New Natives organic microgreens. She said she and other organizers tried to renegotiate the terms with Swenson Builders, but were unsuccessful. “The terms were final,” said Ward.
Over the past three weeks, organizers have scrambled to identify potential new locations the market could move to starting in April, and have found four options near the Live Oak area. Ward says they will try to move to a temporary location while a new permanent home for the market can be established.
“We’re working diligently right now to see if we can do a pop-up farmers market until the ground gets laid in these different places, so we can continue the market every week without having a blackout,” said Ward. She says the market will work to preserve several community outreach events that it hosts at that site, including Platos de Bienestar: Healthy Plates, a program that provides individuals with a “prescription” to eat more fruits and vegetables, funded by the Central California Alliance for Health.
“That’s another reason to stay in the neighborhood because there are lots of neighbors right behind us at that market that could benefit from these programs,” said Ward.
The new lease came as a surprise to market organizers, who say that they have had few issues with the property owner in the past. Ward is a founding member of SCCFM and originally wrote to Swenson Builders founder Barry Swenson in 2002 to ask if he would host the market in the East Cliff Village parking lot. He accepted, and she signed the original six-month lease for the space for $1 per month.
The rent was increased in 2011, she says, and the market has continued to operate on a month-to-month basis for more than 20 years. Market organizers declined to share how much they are currently paying to lease the parking lot, but several said the new lease would have increased the current rate by 500%.
Joe Schirmer, owner of Dirty Girl Produce in Santa Cruz, also serves on the market’s board. He has sold at the Live Oak market since it started, and says he’s noticed a recent shift in the market’s relationship with Swenson Builders. “All the people that have been [at Swenson] that we knew, and seemed to have our best interests at heart, are gone,” he said. According to Schirmer, the new terms included moving the market to a second parking lot behind the shopping center and limiting the vendors to farmers, excluding its many prepared food vendors.
He said the market might have been pushed out to make way for future site developments: “That’s my guess, because it really kind of seems out of the blue where they just want us out.”
Schirmer admits that relying on a month-to-month lease with a developer had some obvious drawbacks that market organizers should have anticipated, and says the market should have taken steps earlier to seek out a longer-term lease. “As much as I’d like to blame the evil corporation, I think we also had a lack of vision and we got ourselves into this mess,” he said.
Swenson Builders says it values its long relationship with the market and appreciates its role in the Live Oak community. “In recent negotiations, we endeavored to align our mutual interests within the framework of evolving real estate market conditions and our development plans for the property,” Natalia Dykowska, a Swenson representative, said in an emailed statement. “Despite our efforts to reach a mutually beneficial agreement, and after several months of discussions, we were disappointed to learn of the Santa Cruz Community Farmers’ Market’s decision to decline our latest proposal.”
Dykowska said the proposal was carefully constructed and based on “market standards, the specific needs of the community” and Swenson’s relationship with the market.
There are currently no active development applications on the East Cliff Village Shopping Center, according to the Santa Cruz County Planning Department. Dykowska did not offer any detail on Swenson’s development plans for the site.
Farmers and other vendors will be hurt the most by the move and any disruption to the market while it searches for a new home, Schirmer says. He anticipates a 25% drop in sales from the move alone. “If we don’t have a market in two weeks, then we’ll lose 100% of whatever anybody was going to make that day,” said Schirmer. “I don’t know if we can really forecast how long it’s going to take for us to get permits and get everything in order to have a farmers market.”
Jamie Collins, owner of Serendipity Farms in Aromas, has sold blueberries and vegetables at the Live Oak market for 15 years. This year, she was excited to finally have permission to sell strawberries as well. She more than doubled her strawberry acreage in anticipation of meeting that need, but now fears that the market’s move will result in significant losses.
“This is the first year I get to sell strawberries there and then come to find out right at the beginning of the season that the market is going to have to move. It’s just such a bummer,” said Collins. “Whenever you move it, it gets off people’s radar. It’s not in their routine – on their bikes, on their walk, whatever. If it’s moved even a couple blocks, it’s just never good.”
Nevertheless, she says she’s optimistic that the market will endure and supports whatever decision the organizers make regarding a new location. Farmers are used to having to pivot and change, and this is no exception: “We’re totally resilient,” said Collins.
She says she hopes market customers will make an effort to visit the new location and support the farmers, even if it’s a little out of their way. “I just hope that the people that have been going to that market make the effort to find us wherever we end up and support us, because we have been growing things ahead of time, not expecting this change,” said Collins. “If they could continue to support us and change their routine a bit to make sure that the market is a part of it, that would be great.”
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