Farmers Market director thanks city for emergency relocation to City Hall Play

The director of the Malibu Farmers Market thanked the city manager for saving her bacon Sunday.

The city gently kicked her market out of Legacy Park and Civic Center Way, and forcibly helped her set up at City Hall.

Debra Bianco appeared before the city council Monday night to say thank you to the city staff who did the physical work to move the market from Legacy Park to the parking lot at City Hall. Bianco told the council she did not know what would happen Sunday at sunrise.

“Do you know what it was like to show up here at 6 o'clock in the morning — and I drive up here — and I'm usually here to talk to everybody before the market,” Bianco said. “And I pop up and see City Hall and I think oh my God all these people, all these trucks all over the place. And I go, oh my god, how are we going to pull this off? Vendors get upset very easily, right?”

The way they pulled it off was an entire staff of city workers ready to set up the Farmers Market.

“I go to look I felt like it was the army out there. It was the staff — it was the troops. Who was it? It was the city of Malibu,” Bianco said.

City Manager Joe Irvin, many of his department heads, and the entire staff of code enforcement were there to help move the market.

“I was here yesterday at 6 a.m. as they were setting up in the flow for ease of ingress and egress for vendors,” Irvin said. “It worked pretty smoothly and parking was located in a safe location.”

At the council meeting, Bianco pointed a finger across the room, directly at the city manager.

“All of a sudden I see him! Who is he? He was there — little baseball cap, shorts, I go ‘hi Joe.’ I don't know what's going on guys. I see everybody out there, the whole entire staff. So I'm trying to figure out where do I put the trucks — trucks on top of trucks — the trucks are starting to pile up. Bottom line: next thing I know we were set up. I'm grateful to him and I wanted everybody to know that and I wanted to say thank you.”

Irvin tells us he used to work at a farmers market while he was young. He says he wants this one to continue to grow and thrive. But he said rules are rules.

“No one, I believe no one loves the market more than me,” Irvin said. “But also, I want to make sure that we were applying our rules consistently and evenly. There are deed restrictions at Legacy Park that prohibit the use of commercial activity. And while those aren't being pressed hard against us right now they still exist and put us in jeopardy to the cities, retaining that site and how it's operated long-term.”

So what's next for the Farmers Market? Next weekend it will probably be up at City Hall. The weekend after that there is no farmers market — they take Labor Day weekend to make way for the Malibu Chili Cook-Off at the Civic Center.

Bianco says after that, the merchants need help.

“At the end of the day, the vendors lost more than half of their sales,” she said. “We were there — we were still standing. We've been working diligently with the city. The city, the county and I. And just to put on the record, we could not go back to the county site last June because it was full of sandbags. I documented that.”

Bygones be bygones. The Farmers Market is going to be at City Hall next weekend, and eventually back down at the library.