A farmers market is coming next month to Orlando City Stadium in Parramore, a neighborhood long considered a “food desert” because of its lack of healthy food options.

The Parramore Farmers Market will be held outside the soccer stadium each Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., starting Jan. 6. The debut is expected to draw more than 30 vendors, selling everything from fresh produce to art and gourmet popcorn, all produced locally.

“We intend to transform Parramore’s food desert into a food oasis,” said the market’s coordinator, Lynn Nicholson, a resident who helped found the city’s first community garden in Parramore in 2008.

The Orlando City Council signed off on a contract with the Orlando City Soccer Club on Monday for use of the team’s stadium for the market, which each week will host up to 42 vendors along a walkway on the east side of the stadium, near where Pine Street dead-ends at the venue’s entrance.

The team agreed to provide janitorial services and security for the event, as well as access to the stadium’s restrooms and electricity for some vendors.

Co-founder Kay Rawlins linked the club’s interest in helping bring fresh produce to Parramore to soccer programs its Orlando City Foundation hold for children from low-income families.

“We teach nutrition education, and we started to realize that we were teaching it to kids who didn’t have access to fresh food,” she said.

The city and team later partnered on a community garden at the Rock Lake Neighborhood Center on Tampa Avenue northwest of Parramore, which features 19 garden plots as well as a mini soccer field.

“We want to be the best neighbors we can be in this area,” Rawlins said. “This is our neighborhood now. This is where we spend all of our working days.”

A 2001 study of by the University of Central Florida and nonprofit Hebni Nutrition Consultants Inc., found a near-complete lack of available fresh produce in Parramore, where many residents lived miles from the nearest stores with affordable fruits and veggies. There are no major grocery stores in the neighborhood.

“We’ve been trying to find different ways in which we can provide more food access and food production within the Parramore community to really address that concern,” said Chris Castro, city sustainability director.

In 2016, the city was awarded a $250,000 grant by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to set up the Parramore Farmers Market, offer nutrition and cooking classes and set up “farmlettes” in residential front yards.

Castro and Nicholson stressed that the market isn’t about importing food to Parramore from elsewhere. The city is seeking out neighborhood growers, vendors and craftspeople when possible, Nicholson said, “giving them an opportunity to become entrepreneurs.”

Brent Buffington, executive director of Growing Orlando, which runs an urban garden on nearby South Street, said the nonprofit’s booth next month will feature kale, collard greens and radishes. When the weather warms, he hopes to add cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers.

“We’ll be taking fresh-grown produce right from two blocks from where the market is,” he said.

Likely the youngest entrepreneurs will be at the booth for Black Bee Honey, a venture created by students in the Parramore Kidz Zone mentorship program. The teens, ages 15 to 19, traveled to an apiary in Gainesville to harvest their product.

Reginald Burroughs, the program’s director of youth employment, said he hopes to use the honey profits to help other students at the Parramore Kidz Zone launch similar business ideas.

“This gives [the youths] a way to give back to their community in a positive, healthy and sweet kind of way,” he said.

Neal Crozier, who earlier this year opened the specialty popcorn shop Popcorn Junkie on Church Street, said he plans to bring several of his best-sellers to the farmers market.

“I think it’ll bring more traffic, which the community could use, of course,” he said.

Vendor spaces at the market will range from $8 to $25 through February, then jump to between $10 and $35. Free spots are also available for city-approved nonprofits.

Once soccer season starts up again, city officials said they hope fans will arrive early on Saturday game days to visit the market.

“The idea is that this could be a regional market for the west side of Orlando, but also bringing people from the east side over to enjoy the culture of west Orlando,” Castro said.

He said the city is also stressing affordability. The market will be able to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dollars, commonly called food stamps, he said. The market is seeking approval to join the state’s Fresh Access Bucks program, which doubles the value of SNAP benefits when they’re used to purchase Florida-grown produce.

“What we’re trying to do is really make the dollars go further,” Castro said.

jeweiner@orlandosentinel.com, 407-420-5171 or @JeffWeinerOS on Twitter

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