(Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer helps cut the ribbon.)
By Jeff Maisey
Old Beach Farmers Market has a new location, but it didn’t have to move far.
Held on each Saturday from 9 AM to noon for 17 years in the parking lot of Croc’s 19th Street Bistro and then extending down 19th Street, the Market has shifted just one block over to 18th Street in the ViBe Creative District.
“This is helpful because we can fit everybody together and add 15 more vendors,” said an enthusiastic Lori Golding Zontini, the executive director of Old Beach Farmers Market.
Old Beach Farmers Market has an average of 45 vendors each week selling a wide variety of items, everything from a pickup truck load of fresh corn to local, seasonal vegetables and berries to baked goods, eggs, flowers, jams and cheeses, peanuts, spices/herbs, seafood, coffee, salsas, and handmade goat soaps.
The 18th Street location provides more room for patrons — like a long aisle — and also better utilizes the ViBe Park where live entertainment serenades shoppers and provides another space for arts and craft vendors.
The market adds to the quality of life for residents and provides tourists a taste of the city, especially those renting houses and apartments for the week at the oceanfront preferring to cook for their family and friends.
“This is where people can come with their families and spend time outdoors,” said Mayor Bobby Dyer, who was on-site for the official ribbon cutting ceremony. “We couldn’t be prouder of the ViBe District and how much they mean to our great city.”
Old Beach Farmers Market operates as a non-profit. It’s board of directors president, Duff Kliewer, has been involved since the beginning.
“We came together in the winter of 2007,” said Kliewer. “There were four of us: myself, my partner Bruce Pencil, Laura Wood Habr, and her mother, Anne Wright. All of us had been to areas not as nice as ours but had farmers markets. We couldn’t understand why we didn’t.”
Kliewer believes the continuing success of the market hinges on the quality of Virginia Beach farmers and craft makers.
“We have always been about local growers and food producers who use local ingredients,” he said. “If somebody wanted to use the word organic in what they were selling, they had to be certified organic. We really have been the gold standard of what we do.”
In many ways, the existence of the Old Beach Farmers Market and the passionate involvement of its board members opened the door for the creation of the ViBe District in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Street corridor, now home to many trendy restaurants, a bakery, distillery, two breweries, and many visual artists.
“Laura Wood had the vision that we would start with Old Beach Farmers Market and that would lead to all of this,” said Kliewer, “and it took awhile. And now the ViBe is a thriving entity unto itself with a wonderful executive director in Kate Pittman. Look at the way it is already revitalizing 17th, 18th, and parts of 19th streets.”
