Marin County inks farmers’ market accord to build $24M new home

The organization that operates two year-round farmers’ markets at the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael entered a new 40-year agreement to move toward building a $24 million permanent home.

The nonbinding agreement on a facility for the market, held in parking lots on Thursdays and Sundays, would build it on a long-vacant lot along Civic Center Drive in San Rafael, county officials announced May 16. The lot is known by most as the Christmas tree lot, located across from the Marin Center complex and county fairgrounds.

The Agricultural Institute of Marin, based in an office off Smith Ranch Road in northern San Rafael, has been working with county officials to update a memorandum of understanding for a 40-year term of use, with two more 10-year terms to extend, officials said.

The announcement came after the Marin County Board of Supervisors approved the agreement, an update of a 2012 memorandum of understanding. The agreement outlines the responsibilities of both parties in the planning of potential future construction of a new business headquarters for the institute, an indoor market, a paved parking lot, canopies over parking stalls and other improvements.

The institutes’s master-planned project for its Public Market Hall includes a 30,000-square-foot building on the northern end of the lot, close to the new Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit station at McInnis Parkway and Civic Center Drive. Fundraising is ongoing, and construction would be phased in over time.

The institute, which sponsors other area markets, operates a Thursday farmers market at the paved lot in front of the Veterans Memorial Auditorium, directly across Civic Center Drive from the proposed market complex at the vacant lot. Also, it operates a Sunday farmers market in the southern parking lot of the Civic Center off Peter Behr Drive.

Eventually, the institute would move both markets to the new location, according the county.