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

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

The city's answer, laid out by spokesman Matt Myerhoff in the Times, is that the City Hall lot is a stopgap: the market can keep selling there until Cornucopia has a permit in hand for its old ground, a parking lot on Santa Monica College's Malibu satellite campus — which many residents know as the Malibu Library lot, the Times noted. That campus lot held the market for years. Legacy Park was the construction-era substitute the city allowed while campus work ran, and the work wrapped 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.

The congestion math Myerhoff gave the Times: come summer, roughly 40% of the civic center's public street parking goes to the market's booths and vendor setups. 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.