An average 1,000 shoppers stock up on vegetables, fruit, pies and crafts every Sunday at the Red Bank institution, one of the state’s largest farm markets.
Freshly supplied with approvals to build a parking garage/office building, the owners of the Galleria Red Bank complex say the decade-old Farmers Market they host at the site will continue during and after construction, which could begin this year.
“It’s not going anywhere,” co-owner George Sourlis tells redbankgreen.
Meantime, the market’s 2009 season takes its traditional Mother’s Day bow this Sunday with a fully-booked slate of 30 vendors selling everything to from corn to cheesecake, from picture frames to pickles.
The market’s future was called into question by the Sourlis family’s plan to nearly double the size of the Galleria.
The garage and office structure, which won borough planning board approval Monday night, will devour the parking lot that has been the market’s once-a-week home, at the corner of Shrewsbury Avenue and West Front Street.
But ending a self-imposed blackout on talking to the media while the request was pending, George Sourlis says the family is looking at “several options” for accommodating the market in the future once construction begins.
Those include moving it elsewhere on the Galleria property there’s a smaller parking lot at the southern end of the property or to a lot on the opposite side of Shrewsbury Avenue, he says.
Whatever the solution, the family is deeply committed to the market that his mother, Elaine, dreamed up ten years ago, Sourlis says.
“We will not lose it, that’s for sure,” he says. “It’s become a focal point for the borough, and it’s important for the local farms to have a place to sell their goods.”
The market will be open from 9a to 2p every Sunday through November 22.
