After Losing Its Longtime Home, Ellsworth Farmers Market Finds Permanent Site
Displaced when its Main Street building was sold, the market opens its 2026 season May 2 in a bigger waterfront lot.
The Ellsworth Farmers Market will open its 2026 season on May 2 at a different waterfront spot: a lot at the Union River Center for Innovation, beside Harbor Park on Water Street, market chair Jordan Fountain said. The market plans to stay there through November.
Founded in 1978, the nonprofit market spent roughly 15 years at 190 Main St. before that property changed hands under a new owner. Vendors set up for the 2025 season at a temporary spot near Fogtown Brewing Co., where room for stalls and visitor parking ran short, before the group secured the riverside lot. Fountain said the new spot gives vendors and shoppers far more room to spread out. As a nonprofit, the market gets a break on the rent it pays the city-owned business incubator, she said.
This season brings 12 vendors selling produce, meat, bread, flowers and other goods, including four newcomers such as a wellness apothecary and a farm offering pickled and canned items. Organizers also plan live music and storytime for children, and, through ties with the Maine Federation of Farmers' Markets and Healthy Acadia, will let shoppers use food stamps. Cara Romano, who heads the community group Heart of Ellsworth and is helping promote the new spot, said, "Farmers markets are vital economic engines for any downtown."
This story was first reported by Bangor Daily News.
