Park at 11 Riverside Avenue on a Wednesday afternoon and you'll notice what's missing: the circling. For years, showing up at the Old Greenwich Farmers Market meant looping the lot at Living Hope Community Church, hoping someone was packing up a stroller and a canvas bag at the same moment you needed their spot. This summer, that ritual disappeared, because the market itself did. It's now three blocks and one town line away, parked in the lot at St. Catherine of Siena Church, and for the first time in more than a decade, it's a Riverside address.
The name hasn't caught up. It's still called the Old Greenwich Farmers Market on the sign, on Instagram, on the vendor applications. But the geography has moved, and so has the set of tradeoffs that come with it. Parking is easier. Timing is stricter. And the whole arrangement is built on a year-to-year handshake that could unwind the moment the host church wants its lot back.
Same Name, New Zip Code
The market spent roughly a decade and a half at 38 West End Avenue, on a parking lot owned by Living Hope Community Church. That ended when the church moved forward with a residential project on its property, two new dwellings the Greenwich Planning & Zoning Commission approved at a November 2025 meeting, even as it denied the church's separate request to expand parking there. Once that project cleared, the lot the market had used for years was no longer available on the terms it needed, and organizers went looking for a new home.
They found one in Riverside. St. Catherine of Siena Church agreed to host the market across its lots at 11, 13, and 17 Riverside Avenue for the 2026 season, and the Planning & Zoning Commission signed off on the arrangement in July. Market founder Dana Lee told commissioners the choice came down to space: St. Catherine's had the room, and it wasn't running its usual parish carnival this year, which freed up the lot entirely.
What Actually Changed
| Living Hope (through 2025) | St. Catherine's (2026 season) | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 38 West End Ave, Old Greenwich | 11 Riverside Ave, Riverside |
| Hours | 2:30 to 6 p.m. | 1 to 5 p.m. |
| Parking | One lot, known for circling and waiting | Roughly 29 spots used by vendors, about 70 more left open |
| Season | June through November | June through November 11, 2026 |
| Approval | Standing arrangement | Requires annual renewal |
The hours shifted earlier, and that wasn't arbitrary. St. Catherine's holds funerals that typically begin around 11 a.m. and a Wednesday evening mass at 5:15 p.m. The market's 1 to 5 p.m. window was built to sit between the two. Vendors don't arrive more than an hour before opening, and teardown takes less than thirty minutes, which matters when the lot has to be clear for whatever the church has scheduled next.
The Parking Math, And Why It Isn't Permanent
The number that made this move possible is the same number that makes it fragile. Vendors occupy about 29 spots across the three lots. That leaves close to 70 open for shoppers, which is roughly double what the old Living Hope lot offered on a good week. For anyone who used to time their arrival around the odds of finding a spot, that's a real improvement.
But the deal comes with conditions attached. The Planning & Zoning approval has to be renewed every year, not granted once and left alone. And Lee has already agreed to suspend the market for a week if St. Catherine's carnival returns in a future season, which means the empty lot that makes this whole arrangement work is only empty by choice, not by design. A resident named Colleen Proppé, who organized a petition after the relocation was first proposed, put the stakes plainly:
"The loss of our beloved Farmers' Market is significant to this town."
Her petition argued the community should have had more say in where the market landed, and asked whether Living Hope could delay its own construction long enough to buy time for a different site in Old Greenwich. That didn't happen. The market moved. But the objection is worth remembering, because it's the clearest signal that this arrangement is a placeholder, not a settled address.
A few other details reinforce that read:
- There's no green space or playground at the new site, so there's little reason for shoppers to linger the way they might have at a park-adjacent location.
- An off-duty or retired police officer directs traffic in the lot each week, a cost the market organizers absorb to keep the arrangement workable.
- The three lots in use also serve the J House, TAG buses, Children's Day School, and the Greenwich Japanese School, so the empty spots aren't dedicated to the market. They're simply unclaimed at that hour.
What's Actually On The Tables
The vendor mix is smaller than the Wednesday crowds might suggest, usually 12 to 15 stalls, with regulars like Jackie's Empanadas and Wave Hill Breads anchoring the lineup alongside rotating Connecticut farms. Sono Baking and Carrot Top Kitchen have applied to join once their temporary food service permits clear, which would round out the baked goods and prepared food side of the market.
Worth knowing if you're new to the rotation: this isn't a certified producer-only market, unlike the Greenwich Farmers Market that runs in the Horseneck Lot downtown. That one requires every vendor to grow or make what they sell, and a market master checks. The Riverside market mixes Connecticut-grown produce with resellers and prepared food vendors, which is part of why it moves fast. Strawberries and blueberries are typically gone within the first half hour, according to Lee, so if the goal is fruit rather than atmosphere, arriving right at 1 p.m. matters more than it would at a market with deeper produce reserves.
Riverside Is Picking Up More Of This Kind Of Thing
The farmers market isn't the only piece of shared infrastructure that's landed in Riverside this year on borrowed footing. Waste Free Greenwich launched app-accessed smart bins for food scrap recycling at Binney Park and Cos Cob Park in July, using the metroKEY app to unlock secure, 24/7 drop-off points. It's a small program, but it fits the same pattern as the market: a town-wide resource that used to live nowhere in particular, now anchored to a specific Riverside location, with its long-term footprint still being worked out.
None of this makes Riverside a lesser host. If anything, it suggests the neighborhood is becoming the default answer when Old Greenwich and Cos Cob need somewhere for a shared amenity to land. But it's worth reading the fine print rather than assuming permanence. The parking lot that solved the market's crowding problem is generous because a parish carnival didn't happen this year. Next year is an open question, one the Planning & Zoning Commission will revisit on its own schedule, not the market's.
For now, Wednesday afternoons at 11 Riverside Avenue are worth building into a routine. Just don't assume the address is fixed. Ask Dana Lee's own experience with Living Hope: a good arrangement can last fifteen years and still end with less than a year of notice.
If you're weighing what daily life actually looks like in Riverside, from farmers market Wednesdays to the walk to Binney Park, Nora Giovati can talk you through the neighborhood block by block. Show me homes or list my property, contact Nora today.
