The Old Greenwich Farmers Market has captured the essence of the neighborhood: walkable streets, local flavor, and a community rhythm that defines coastal living in Greenwich - it's been exactly sixteen summers!
This summer, the Old Greenwich Farmers Market shifted to a new location at St. Catherine’s Church in Riverside, spending June and July settling into its updated home. The move — and the organizer’s own reflections on how smoothly the transition has gone — reveals something the petition to “save” the market never fully addressed: the market itself wasn’t at risk. What changed was the walkability that made the original spot so beloved.
For years, families could reach the market by foot or bike from the village, a convenience that showcased one of Old Greenwich’s strongest lifestyle features: easy access to local amenities without relying on a car. The relocation highlights how deeply walkability shapes daily life here — and why buyers consistently seek out neighborhoods like Old Greenwich and Riverside for their coastal charm, community feel, and pedestrian‑friendly streets.
The Lease That Wasn't Renewed
The market's host for most of its run, Living Hope Community Church at 38 West End Avenue, chose not to renew its arrangement with the market this year. According to the petition that followed, the church's pastor told organizer Colleen M. Proppé over the phone that neighbors had complained about noise and parking. But the church had also filed its own application with Greenwich Planning & Zoning to expand parking and add housing on the property. P&Z denied the parking expansion and approved two new dwellings instead, a sequence Greenwich Free Press documented under the headline "Living Hope Community Church to Cease Farmers Market, P&Z Denies Church Parking Expansion, Approves 2 New Dwellings." The lot the market used for sixteen years is being repurposed for housing, not simply cleared of a nuisance.
A Petition, and a Warning That Didn't Hold Up
Proppé's Change.org petition, "Keep the OG Farmers' Market in Old Greenwich," argued that any relocation would hurt families who relied on the market as a walkable, bikeable ritual. She proposed alternatives closer to the village, including an underused West End Avenue extension lot near the Old Greenwich School ball field and a rarely used CVS parking lot. Both were floated as ways to keep the market inside Old Greenwich proper.
Neither happened. Planning & Zoning took up an application for St. Catherine's Church at 11 Riverside Avenue, and the commission voted unanimously to approve it in late July. Market co-founder and manager Dana Lee told the commission she had also looked at the Cohen Eastern Greenwich Civic Center, but Parks & Recreation said the property was booked with summer camps and couldn't accommodate the market this season.
What's notable is what Lee said next, on the record, about how the new site is actually working:
"I would have preferred it at the Civic Center, personally, but the vendors have been pleased because we have new shoppers and people can find the market better than they could down in Old Greenwich."
That's the opposite of what the petition warned would happen. Resident Ashley Cole spoke in support at the same hearing, telling the commission the market was "a great part of the community culture of Greenwich" and calling Lee "incredibly responsible." The Patch coverage of the vote captured a hearing where the loudest concern wasn't whether the market would survive the move, but how loud the music could get next to a church and a school.
What the New Setup Actually Looks Like
The market now operates across three lots at St. Catherine's, at 11, 13, and 17 Riverside Avenue, instead of the single lot it used at Living Hope. A few specifics changed along with the address:
- Hours shifted from the old 2:30 to 6 p.m. window to 1 to 5 p.m., a change made to work around funerals that can begin as early as 11 a.m. at the church.
- Parking capacity roughly doubled. The market's tents occupy 29 spots at 11 Riverside Avenue, but the site leaves 70 additional spaces on the east side of Riverside Avenue unclaimed by the market, plus 18 more allocated to St. Catherine's and 12 designated visitor spots. Living Hope's lot offered about half that total.
- Vendor count held steady at 12 to 13 tents, consistent with the 12 to 15 vendors the market has run for years, a mix of Connecticut farms, prepared-food businesses, and the occasional craft or nonprofit table.
- A condition on amplified music was attached to the approval because of the neighboring Greenwich Japanese School and the church itself, with one commissioner noting that people "go to church to pray, have a quiet time."
- The permit is temporary and annual. The market first ran on a staff-approved special event permit for up to 14 non-consecutive days between June 17 and September 16. The commission's late-July vote extended that through November 11, 2026, but the market has to reapply every year.
None of that reads like a market in decline. It reads like a market that traded one landlord's parking lot for a bigger one down the road.
The Distance That Actually Changed
Here's what the operational numbers don't capture. St. Catherine's Church sits on Riverside Avenue in the neighboring Riverside section of Greenwich, not in Old Greenwich. The old West End Avenue lot and the new Riverside Avenue lots sit in two different Greenwich neighborhoods entirely, close enough for a longer bike ride but far enough that showing up on foot from the Old Greenwich village center is no longer the default. A market that families used to reach by walking down from the village, or letting a kid pedal over solo after school, is now a market you drive or bike a real distance to reach.
That's the piece the petition's framing got backwards. It treated the fight as one about whether the market would exist. Lee's own comments suggest it was never really in danger of that. It was a fight about geography, about whether a sixteen-year-old Wednesday habit tied to the Old Greenwich village center would keep that shape once it needed a new home. The market kept its vendors, its hours were only tweaked, and by the organizer's own account it picked up new shoppers in Riverside. What it didn't keep is its status as something you could stumble into on a walk from Sound Beach Avenue.
What Hasn't Moved
The rest of an Old Greenwich Wednesday, and the rest of the summer, is exactly where it's always been.
Binney Park's calendar runs independent of any church's redevelopment plans. The OGRCC's model sailboat regatta, which marked 61 years in 2025, still launches homemade and remote-control boats onto Binney Pond every summer. The Sound Beach Community Band's free summer concerts still draw lawn chairs to the park, including a Billy Joel and Elton John tribute program on July 26, 2026. And Greenwich Recreation's July 4th fireworks lit up Binney Park on July 2 this year as part of the town's celebration of America's 250th anniversary, alongside a matching display at Greenwich Point.
Sound Beach Avenue keeps turning over restaurants on its own timeline too, with no P&Z fight required. The old Beach House Café space at 220 Sound Beach Avenue is now Siren Restobar, restaurateur Anshu Vidyarthi's Mediterranean tapas spot with a raw bar and a small rear garden. The shuttered Bank of America building down the street became Juju Cantina, Vidyarthi's Mexican concept with banana-yellow banquettes where the bank's teller windows used to be. And in September 2025, Green & Tonic opened its ninth location at 239 Sound Beach Avenue, bringing a build-your-own salad station and multi-day meal boxes to the same stretch of storefronts that's fed the village for decades.
None of that needed a special event permit or a church's blessing. It just kept happening on the same six blocks it always has, while the one Wednesday institution that did need someone else's parking lot ended up finding a bigger one in the next neighborhood over.
If you've lived here through all sixteen summers of the old market, the Riverside version is worth the drive. It's the same vendors, a slightly later start, and by the manager's own account, a better draw than the old spot ever pulled. What's gone is the version where you didn't have to plan the trip at all.
That kind of granular shift, in what's walkable versus what now requires a car, is exactly the sort of detail that shapes how a street or a section of Old Greenwich actually lives day to day, which is also the kind of thing that shows up in what a home here is worth. If you're weighing that question for your own property, The Rosato Team knows this village block by block and is glad to talk through it. Get Your Home Valuation whenever you're ready for an honest read on where you stand.
