Peconic Land Trust Seeks Operator For Amagansett Farmers Market

The Peconic Land Trust is looking for someone to manage the Amagansett Farmers Market for up to three years, beginning this summer.

The next iteration is up to the new operator, who must meet specific goals the trust has put forward in a request for proposals last week.

For six years, Eli Zabar, a Manhattan restaurateur, ran the market on Montauk Highway, but his lease is up. According to Pam Greene, vice president of the Peconic Land Trust, the request for proposals was to make the process of selecting the next manager more transparent.

Mr. Zabar could just as easily return to the market if the trust selects his proposal as the best. He did not return calls for comment about whether he would submit a proposal.

“We want to make sure we have somebody in there who is willing to work with local farmers,” Ms. Greene said this week. “That’s been the key thing we’ve always wanted. We had that with Eli, and we want to continue that.”

Interested parties will have to incorporate an educational aspect into their management plan and continue to operate the farmers market as a community hub and gathering place.

Alex Balsam of Balsam Farms and a board member of ECCO Farm, a nonprofit community-run farm, said the most important aspect would be to ensure the market continues to be a place where people congregate. For as long as he’s been alive, he said, it’s always been a stop to grab coffee and a muffin.

He added that managing the market isn’t something either Balsam Farms or EECO is interested in or capable of doing.

“It would be outside of our core competency, and we have a successful farm stand now,” he said about Balsam Farms. “We’re farmers first and foremost, and to take on something like that would be moving too far outside what we’re trying to do. It doesn’t fit our personal business model.”

While Mr. Zabar was running it, the farmers market held Souper Tuesdays, which featured live music, tastings and activities to highlight local produce, including creating soups with locally grown ingredients. Mr. Zabar had imagined and aimed for a farmers market that featured the best of the Peconic Bay area and the whole region.

Before that, the market was owned and operated for 54 years by Pat Struk, who sold it to East Hampton Town, the Peconic Land Trust and a preservation-minded Amagansett landowner, Margaret de Cuevas, for $5.5 million. The town purchased the development rights on 7.6 acres of the 9.33-acre property as well. That land is farmed by Amber Waves Farm.

Amanda Merrow of Amber Waves Farm said on Monday that neither she nor her co-founder, Katie Baldwin, are interested in running the farmers market.

“As a neighbor we look forward to the opportunity to collaborate and work with the tenant,” she said in an email. “Agriculture and education are our primary focus at the farm, and we enjoy the work we do with the community and our community-supported agriculture at the farm and out in the fields.”

According to Ms. Greene, the idea has been to preserve the land and keep the market, which had become part of the Amagansett landscape and economy.

Elaine Jones, who has lived down the road in Amagansett her entire life, said the market is historic. “I remember when it was a wagon out front and Pat used to sell T-shirts, baskets and clothes,” she said on Monday.

Ms. Jones is no stranger to farmers markets—she and Vicki Littman, her daughter, operate their own stand, Vicki’s Veggies, just a bit farther east on Montauk Highway in Amagansett. The farm stand will open for its 34th summer this year.

Ms. Jones said that she hadn’t yet seen the request for proposals, but she said it could present some possibilities. “I would like to look at it because it would be a big operation to have that kind of business,” she said.

Even if Vicki’s Veggies doesn’t turn out to be interested, Ms. Jones said it’s “absolutely important” that whoever takes over the market should aspire to what Ms. Struk created there.

“It needs to be somebody who would be really willing to look at it and keep it up like Pat did,” she said. “It was our competition for 30 years … she had lines out the door.”

The deadline to submit proposals is Tuesday, January 20.