Flagler Beach’s Farmers Market Will Move to South 2nd Street by City Hall After Losing Wickline Park

The Flagler Beach farmers market that’s jazzed up the grounds of the Wickline Center off South Daytona Avenue since 2022 will have a new home after July 4: along South 2nd Street between State Road A1A and South Central Avenue, in front of City Hall. 

The Flagler Beach City Commission, sitting as the board of the Community Redevelopment Agency–the governing arm of the city’s downtown revitalization district–voted 4-0 Thursday evening to grant the move, and also waive a one-time $60 fee that vendors had to pay to sell their wares. 

For the market, the South 2nd Street location is not the holy grail it had wanted. The market wanted to set up weekly at Veterans Park. But close. And it’s a vast improvement on its current location, along South Daytona Avenue, and its former location inside Wickline Park. The South 2nd Street location will give the market the visibility it has long sought and the foot traffic of tourists who wouldn’t know their Wickline from Wickrath.

Flagler Strong, the non-profit based in Flagler Beach that operates as a volunteer service to the city, started the farmers market in March 2022, every Saturday morning from 8 to noon. The market has been a fund-raising mechanism for Flagler Strong, which charges $10 a vendor per week. It has also revived what the city lost during Covid, when a different farmers market used to lushly fill the lot where the Compass at Margaritaville hotel rose over the past 15 months (and just opened).

The market is run by Tracy Callahan-Hennessey, president of Flagler Strong, and Jim Kelling, a city resident for the last four years. On April 11 the city administration let Callahan-Hennessey know that the market had violated the agreement on using Wickline. There’d been complaints about vendors setting up on the basketball court and the use of metallic pallet jacks that could damage the court surface, and the market blocking the court from use. That started discussions that eventually led to the market being moved to South Daytona Avenue.

“It was a pretty nice setting. So abruptly that ended,” Kelling said, “and I was a little disappointed about the way it was handled” by the city, which issued what amounted to an order to cease operating on the court. “I literally drove into a boulder at five o’clock in the morning when I was going to set up the stuff,” Kelling said. “That was pretty detrimental to this program.”

Not that it had been the best location, anyway. “Where we were on the basketball court, we had moderate success as a market for the city. The challenges in that place were the visibility,” Kelling said. The atmosphere was nice, music was added, vendors were allowed to drive on the grass to unload.

The city moved the market to the east side of the Wickline complex, along the sidewalks on South Daytona Avenue, significantly narrowing elbow room and not improving the market’s visibility. “I was very proud of what we were doing over on the basketball court. I feel very defeated about where we’re at now,” Kelling told the city commission. 

“We’ll give it a try there, we already are, but I do not feel like we’ll thrive there,” he said. “I do think we’ll struggle. My personal feeling is it won’t survive. The vendors will go to another place where they’ll make more money, and so I think we’ll wind up without a farmers market in Flagler. I personally don’t want that. I live in Flagler Beach. I love this city, and I would prefer us to have a thriving market.” He pressed for Veterans Park, as did Callahan-Hennessey, who’d been scouting private spaces without success. 

It was Callahan-Hennessey who first proposed shutting down a portion of 2nd Street on Saturdays. She did so almost as a hail Mary suggestion Thursday evening, as the commission was about to ratify the new agreement for South Daytona Avenue. “The main goal is to attract some new vendors, some quality vendors, and that’s been difficult because of the location,” Callahan-Hennessey said. “Finding a location that’s going to draw in a decent income for some of these vendors is really the main goal, and getting them to try us by eliminating the $60 is definitely helpful.”

Soon after she mentioned the South 2nd Street idea, it caught on with Penny Overstreet, the city clerk, and with commissioners. 

“The idea of closing the portion of Second Street early in the morning till noon, there’s not that much traffic there at that time,” Overstreet said, “and they’d be allowed to put a feather flag or whatever at the end of Second and A1A right there.” Commissioner Scott Spradley called it a “great location.” Commissioner Rick Belhumeur and Commission Chair James Sherman were equally supportive, though Belhumeur was uncomfortable about signing off before details were worked out. Sherman nudged him over. 

A Bunnell resident who spoke to the commission said the Flagler Beach market “attracts a lot of people from outside Flagler Beach, and it brings business to the community.” The co-owner of Flagler Sun and Seed, who sets up at the market on Saturdays, described the tight spaces on South Daytona and lent his support for the South 2nd Street location.  

Vendors will still have to pay the annual $55 business tax to have a stand, but will no longer have to pay a $60 processing fee. The city will continue to assume the cost of electricity and garbage pick-up.

As for the long-term future, “Maybe after the Wickline gets reconfigured, if that ever happens, maybe it can be laid out a little better with some paved areas,” Belhumeur said. But the market isn’t likely to want to return to that out-of-the-way Wickrath after it gets a taste of sunnier South 2nd.