Saturday Farmers’ Market Held for Last Time at Longtime Location in Downtown Santa Barbara

Loyal customers who’ve made Saturday’s downtown farmers’ market part of their weekly ritual for nearly 40 years showed up — along with clusters of freshly enrolled college students — to take in the market’s sights and smells one last time at its longtime location on East Cota Street. This Saturday, September 28, the market and its 85 vendors will be setting up shop at new digs centered at the intersection of State and Carrillo streets.

This past Saturday morning, the didgeridoo player was mooing away from her customary spot, the mad strummers and the itinerant fiddlers were attacking their respective fingerboards, and a well-known percussionist showed the world how a musical rake is supposed to be played.

Even for a bucolically fall day that cried out for fresh produce, the market seemed much busier than usual. Some showed up to say goodbye to the dense canopy of jacaranda trees that have provided shade for the city parking lot that the market has called home since 1985. Those trees will be coming down as construction crews begin work on building a new police station on the site. That new station — unlike the existing one, seismically safe and equipped with locker room for women officers — will cost about $103.7 million and is scheduled to be complete in March 2027.

The process of relocating the farmers’ market to its new site has been grueling and painstaking. To help make the transition as smooth as possible this coming Saturday, extra city staff will be on hand.