The Malibu Farmers Market Lost Its Park. Its Operator Says 30 Vendors Skipped the New Lot.

The city says the market can stay in the Malibu City Hall parking lot until it gets a permit to return to the Santa Monica College campus lot. Its operator wants a different site by Aug. 30, 2026.

Malibu Farmers Market vendors sold produce and flowers from the Malibu City Hall parking lot on Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026. Two days earlier, the city said the market could no longer operate at Legacy Park, the municipal park where it had set up weekly since 2023, the Los Angeles Times reported. Where the stalls go on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026, is not settled.

For anyone who shops there on a Sunday morning, that is the practical news: the market is still running, and its address is temporary. The Cornucopia Foundation, the nonprofit that launched the market in 1998 and still runs it, is looking for a better interim site.

The city's account

City spokesman Matt Myerhoff told the Times the market may stay in the City Hall lot until it obtains a permit to return to the parking lot at Santa Monica College's Malibu satellite campus, known to many residents as the Malibu Library lot. The market operated there for years. The city allowed a temporary move to Legacy Park while campus construction was underway, and that work finished in 2023.

Myerhoff said the city had been negotiating with Cornucopia for weeks about a return to the campus lot, and that the talks stalled over unsigned paperwork. He said the foundation "has refused to leave, and that's illegal," in an interview with the Times on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, the day the city announced the Legacy Park decision.

In summer months, market vendors and booths take up about 40% of public street parking in the civic center area, Myerhoff told the outlet. That share is the city spokesman's own figure as relayed to the Times; no underlying city count was published with it. He also cited children playing in the street and said the market was taking resources from local businesses and visitors.

The market's account

Debra Bianco, co-founder and president of the Cornucopia Foundation, said the Friday announcement blindsided the market and left no time to reach vendors before the weekend. She said the negotiations had seemed to be going well. In an emailed statement that Friday, the market said it had been given no warning.

Bianco said at least 30 to 35 vendors did not come to the City Hall lot on Aug. 23.

"It's a hidden location, like it's way up a hill, so we didn't get the foot traffic we usually would have," she told the Times. She said she hopes to secure a better temporary location by Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.

What changes for shoppers

The market's Sunday address is the City Hall lot for now, up the hill from the civic center streets where shoppers have parked for the last three years. The city's position, as Myerhoff described it, is that the arrangement holds until the permit for the Santa Monica College lot comes through. The market's position is that it wants somewhere else first.

Neither side has named a date for the campus-lot permit. Myerhoff, in an interview on Monday, Aug. 24, 2026, called the first City Hall market a success and said everyone went home friends.

The market has drawn tourists and locals to Malibu on Sundays since 1998, including, per the Times, Courteney Cox, Austin Butler and LeAnn Rimes. This weekend, the reliable part of that habit is the day, not the parking lot.

Source: latimes.com, retrieved August 25, 2026.