Highlands Farmers Market Quietly Closes

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

After three months, the second Pacific Palisades Farmers Market location, operating briefly in The Highlands, has come to an end.

“Unfortunately it didn’t go as we had hoped,” Melissa Farwell, director of coordination and development of California Certified Farmers Markets, explained to the Palisadian-Post. “We loved working with everyone, we loved the customers who came, we loved the experience. There was just not enough to hold the vendors there.”

Farwell said that there was a disconnect, since it was a smaller, boutique-style market with close to 20 vendors, and people went expecting a full market, similar to the one operating at Palisades Charter High School on Sundays with nearly 80 vendors.

“There’s no way we could have fit that,” Farwell said, noting that The Highlands location on Palisades Drive was much smaller. 

“It’s always a risk, being in the same area—the same city,” Farwell added.

Most of the vendors operating in The Highlands also have a booth at Pali High, but the two that did not overlap are expected to move over. One farmer will begin at Pali High immediately, but a bread company will take until sometime July.

“I don’t have any updates,” Farwell shared when asked about when or where Palisadians can expect the market to return to the Village area.

The original market, which operated for years along Swarthmore Avenue, moved to Pali High to accommodate construction at Palisades Village in 2016. When the development opened in September 2018 and the market did not return, community members began to speculate if the market would remain at Pali High—or if it would return to the Village, possibly operating along Antioch Street.

“We’re just trying to figure it all out,” Farwell added.

Those who want to shop the Pacific Palisades Farmers Market may do so each Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.