The East Perth Power Station would be transformed into a permanent farmers' market under a bold plan submitted to the State Government.

In February the Government asked for expressions of interest to develop the site as part of its land asset sales program.

Environmental engineer William Thiel has put in an EOI submission for the heritage-listed building to become a farmers' market, with the adjacent land turned into market gardens where produce could be grown.

He believes the demand is there, with the Subiaco Stations Street Markets set to close later this year and Perth City Farm being forced to turn away new vendors for its popular Saturday farmers' market because of limited space.

"It's not a proposal that will make the state a bunch of money," he said.

"But it isn't proposed to cost the state anything, and would allow the site to be a public asset and remain that way for a lot of people to have access to it."

He said it could be difficult to make a commercial profit from historical buildings.

"The idea would be to progressively develop the ground floor, and then into the upper floors and the adjacent site ... so that it could pay for itself and provide a whole bunch of micro-commercial opportunity," he said.

"The model that I have used is the Reading Terminal Markets in Philadelphia, which have been operating continuously on the model that we designed for here for 148 years as a commercial success."

Mr Thiel, an East Perth resident, is offering to use his long-service leave to work on the project free of charge for six months to help get it off the ground.

He said he was confident any issues of contamination at the site could be managed.

East Perth site 'lends itself to market'

Perth City Farm's David Siglin said they had talked with Mr Thiel about the proposal and it was one they would like to look at in more detail.

"The East Perth Power Station is fantastic," he said.

"It lends itself to doing all sorts of things and certainly a market of some type would go well there, so we'd certainly, certainly look at it.

"The fight for the Perth City Farm property was significant, and it took a lot to win that space so it wouldn't be instead of, it would be a different project if the organisation thought to move ahead with it."

City of Vincent Mayor John Carey has also been briefed on the proposal and threw his support behind the idea.

"I think this is a great big bold vision," he said.

"It's something that you see in cities around the world."

Mr Carey said the local community may be concerned the asset would not be accessible to the community, and instead sold off to the highest bidder.

Money 'biggest hurdle'

Mr Thiel is the first to acknowledge that the proposal's biggest hurdle is likely to be money, with the Government hoping to make millions off the East Perth Power Station land as part of its asset sales program.

Under the farmers' market proposal the project would be operated as a not-for-profit, with the proponents purchasing the sites for $1 plus settlement costs or leasing the sites from the Government's Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority (MRA) on a cost-recovery basis.

MRA CEO Kieran Kinsella said a strong response had been received to the calls for expression of interest from a mix of experienced local and national developers.

"Each of the submissions will now be assessed against set criteria in a formal evaluation process," he said.

"A shortlist of successful first stage proponents will then be invited to provide detailed proposals later in the year."

When announcing the opening of expressions for interest in the site earlier this year, Premier Colin Barnett said the Government was looking to gauge the market's interest and was seeking innovative development proposals that would "create, prioritise and maintain community access to the site".

The entire East Perth Power Station site is 8.5ha and comprises four lots.