What do you do when the Sunday ritual you've built two decades of habit around is sitting on land that's already listed with a price tag attached?
That's the question hanging over Montavilla this season, even if most people walking through the market on a Sunday morning haven't heard it phrased that way yet. The Montavilla Farmers Market opened its 20th season on May 3, 2026, at SE 76th and Stark, with one of its biggest opening-day crowds in years. It's also, right now, without a guaranteed home past whenever its current landlord finds a buyer.
Both things are true at the same time. That's the part worth understanding if you live anywhere near Stark Street.
The Anniversary Everyone Noticed
The market's history is well known around the neighborhood by now. It started on Sunday, July 22, 2007, with 17 vendors and more than 2,000 visitors showing up to a lot that was, at the time, mostly empty space next to the Montavilla East Tabor Business Association's home turf. METBA, a volunteer group formed around the SE Stark Street business district, put it together in about ten months on grant money and neighbor donations.
Twenty years later, the market runs year-round on the same 7700 SE Stark Street parcel, with 60 to 65 vendors on a typical summer Sunday and more than 70 across a full season. Market director Anina Estrem, who now runs the operation full time, told East Portland News that the mix of longtime regulars and new shoppers is what kept the thing alive this long. The 2026 opening day included a history display, a button-making station, and a recipe demo, a small look back before the season's actual business got underway.
None of that is a secret. What's less visible is the second story running underneath it.
The Detail the Anniversary Coverage Left Out
In October 2024, the owners of the 0.84-acre lot at 7700 SE Stark Street told the market's operators they intended to sell the property. A year later, the combined lots went publicly on the market with an asking price of $4,999,000. The market is allowed to keep using the space until the sale actually closes, but there's no lease protecting it after that, and no guarantee the next owner wants a Sunday farmers market on the property at all. Montavilla News reported on the relocation search in late March, and as of this month there's still no buyer on record.
The land has changed hands before under similar terms. A private trust bought the market's lot along with the adjoining veterinary building at 7714 SE Stark in April 2018. Part of that parcel used to hold Beets Auto Body, which was razed in 2020 after an earlier sale in 2019. Before that, the space had briefly served as an artist co-op. The pattern is a lot that keeps getting repurposed underneath whoever's using it that decade.
The other tenant with something to lose here is Portland Guitar Repair, which occupies the only remaining permanent building on the site, on its eastern edge. If a buyer wants the full 0.84 acres for something new, that shop is part of what goes with it. The site is zoned Commercial Mixed Use 2, which allows for buildings up to four stories of retail, office, and housing, and any serious redevelopment would take more than a year to clear permitting even after a sale closes. That's not a countdown clock. It's just the timeline nobody's talking about at the produce tables.
Market leadership isn't waiting to find out. They've put together a user survey to guide the search for a new site, looking for a lot that can hold the current vendor count and still work for a Sunday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. schedule.
What Twenty Years Actually Built
The reason this matters beyond sentiment is the scale the market quietly reached. In 2025, shoppers spent an estimated $1.9 million across 43 market days, supporting 92 local farms and businesses and drawing about 67,500 visits over the season, according to East Portland News's coverage of the anniversary. That's not a rounding error for a neighborhood business district. It's the kind of foot traffic that shapes store hours on the block.
| Opening day, 2007 | 2025 season | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendors | 17 | up to 65 weekly, 70+ across the year |
| Visitors | over 2,000 in one day | about 67,500 across the season |
| Market days | 1 | 43 |
| Estimated spending | not tracked | $1.9 million |
Estrem has said the market's presence changed how nearby stores operate, with some shifting their own hours to line up with market Sundays so they can catch the crowd already walking the block. That's the part a land sale actually threatens: not just a Sunday event, but a piece of the reason the surrounding storefronts keep the lights on when they do.
The Market Already Learned to Operate Somewhere Else
Here's the detail most people outside the immediate blocks around Stark and 79th probably don't know: the market already runs a second, smaller version of itself on a completely different piece of ground, and has for at least two summers running.
Every Thursday through late September, a mid-week micro-market sets up at the SE Stark Street and 79th Avenue Plaza, a public street space built through a Portland Bureau of Transportation Public Street Plaza Program grant. From 4 to 7 p.m., a handful of farm and food vendors set up alongside a beer garden and live music. This year's Thursday lineup has included Threshold Brewing & Blending, Kulfi PDX, Moorish Roots, and Sebastiano's, with the opening night built around a jazz set from the Tyler Waltner Trio. If you haven't made it out yet this year, the season is winding down fast. Check the market's own channels for the exact final Thursday before you plan around it.
The Thursday market isn't a backup plan for the Sunday relocation search. It predates the urgency of the land sale and runs on its own grant funding through the city. But it does prove something useful: this market has already shown it can pull a crowd, book vendors, and run a functioning event on a lot it doesn't own outright, on a schedule that isn't the one it built its reputation on. That's not nothing if the Sunday flagship does end up needing a new address.
What This Means If You Already Have a Sunday Habit
If Montavilla is your neighborhood, none of this changes your plans for this weekend. The market is open, the vendor list is full, and the winter season's Kids' POP Club, which hands out $3 vouchers for kids ages 2 to 12 to spend on fresh produce, returns on its usual schedule once the weather turns. Market director Anina Estrem has said the program is often the reason families keep coming back, describing kids who show up all summer asking when they can "go get my money."
But it's worth knowing, the next time you're standing in line for kulfi or picking through a flat of late-season tomatoes, that the ground under your feet has had a for-sale sign on it since 2025, and the people running the market are actively looking for where they'd go if that sign turns into a closing date. Keep an eye on the market's own site and social channels for updates. If a location ever does get confirmed, it likely won't be a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention this year.
Montavilla's food-and-drink corridor has kept adding to itself even as this uncertainty sits in the background, from Montavilla Brew Works marking eleven years this July to newer additions like Quiche Me if You Can taking over the old Sebastiano's space on 81st. Whatever happens with the Stark Street lot, the neighborhood's habit of building things that last a decade or two doesn't look like it's slowing down.
If you're curious what else is shifting in this part of Multnomah County, from the businesses filling in the storefronts to what a place like this actually offers day to day, our Multnomah County neighborhood guide is a good place to keep browsing. And if you ever find yourself wondering what your own home in this part of Portland is worth in a market that keeps shifting under everyone's feet, not just the farmers market's, the Daniel Belza Team is always happy to talk it through. Request your free, personalized home valuation whenever you're ready.
