The Oak Park Farmers’ Market will be back in business on Saturday, May 30, but in light of COVID-19, it will be in a new location with social distancing guidelines in place.
The Chicago Tribune reports the market will be open on Saturdays 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. through Oct. 31 but it will no longer be in the parking lot of Pilgrim Congregational Church. Instead, it’s relocating to Scoville Avenue, South Boulevard and East Avenue.
The assistant director of development customer services, Cam Davis, said that fortunately, the timeframe isn’t much different than 2019 and pre-coronavirus.
“Hopefully, everything will be good this way," Davis told the Chicago Tribune. "We’ll have 23 Saturdays of the market, and we’re only missing one Saturday from what occurred last year. We’re happy to report, if we use last year as an example, we had 25-26 vendors last year. This year, it looks like we’ll have between 22 and 24 vendors. There hasn’t been a big drop-off in terms of interest in our vendors.”
Still, the changes that the coronavirus has brought about can’t be denied. Davis said the market plans on complying with social distancing guidelines and having the vendors at a safe distance between one another, which is what caused the location change.
“The parking lot [at the church] was not going to allow that to happen,” he told the Chicago Tribune. But the market will still have a presence at the church parking lot as customers can head there to pick up items they ordered online.
Davis said this new venture is a great way to expand the markets’ reach and business while staying safe.
“We’re excited to be able to use the parking lot for the new opportunity many farmers markets are exploring with an online ordering platform. It will be a very safe alternative for people that do not want to walk through the market,” he told the Chicago Tribune.
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