On the third Wednesday of August, a shopper stood on Swarthmore Avenue. Nineteen months had passed since the Palisades Fire shut the market down in January 2025. The market was back, but the day of the week had changed.
That mismatch is the story. As the Palisadian-Post reported, the Pacific Palisades Farmers Market returned on August 19, 2026, four days after Rick Caruso's Palisades Village reopened its doors a few blocks away. Most residents who have been waiting for this moment assumed the schedule would simply pick up where it left off: a Sunday morning ritual, the same two streets, the same rhythm. Instead, the market came back on a Wednesday afternoon, on one street instead of two, and organizers have been clear that this is a temporary arrangement, not the finished version.
The reason has almost nothing to do with the Village's construction timeline. It has to do with what Sunday is worth to the farmers themselves.
The Day Change Is About Vendors, Not Construction
It would be easy to assume the Wednesday slot was a logistical compromise, something dictated by what space or staffing Palisades Village could offer four days after its own reopening. That is not what happened. According to Melissa Farwell, director of development for Raw Inspiration, the nonprofit that has run the market since 2000, the choice was deliberate and driven by the vendors' own calendars, not the Village's construction schedule.
Sunday is the most contested day on the Southern California farmers market circuit. Most of the growers who used to sell in the Palisades already hold Sunday spots at other certified markets across the Westside and Valley, and pulling them away from those commitments to restart a smaller Palisades market would have meant asking farmers to choose between an established income stream and an unproven one. Farwell told the Palisadian-Post that Sundays are simply too busy and too valuable for most vendors to abandon on short notice, which is why organizers opted to launch on a lower-stakes weekday first and watch how the neighborhood responds before touching the Sunday question again.
That is a meaningful distinction for anyone trying to understand how this market actually operates. It is not a corporate amenity attached to a shopping center. It is a farmer-first operation, and the schedule reflects whose interests came first in the rebuild.
One Street Instead of Two
The footprint shrank along with the day. Before the fire, the market spanned both Swarthmore Avenue and Antioch Street. The August comeback occupies Swarthmore only, the same stretch the market has always used, without the Antioch extension that used to double its size on a typical Sunday.
As of mid-July, the vendor lineup was still being assembled, according to reporting from the Palisadian-Post. That detail matters because it signals this is a soft restart built one relationship at a time, not a full relaunch executed on a fixed date. During the 19-month closure, Raw Inspiration folded its displaced Palisades vendors into the Brentwood Farmers Market, which means longtime regulars who found their favorite grower's stand across the 405 over the past year and a half may recognize the same faces now selling again on Swarthmore.
What's Actually There This Fall
Opening day drew a mix of longtime growers and produce sellers, several of whom have supplied the market for a decade or more, including some who have been showing up since it started in 2000. Vendors confirmed for the return include:
- Pedro's Organic Avocado Ranch
- AZ Ranch
- Lily's Eggs
- Frecker Farms
- C&L Farms / JM Produce
- Chickenhood
- Fungi Valley
- G Farms
- Kepner / Maust Farms
- Rob & Isa Floral
- Divine Décor
Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park, who represents Pacific Palisades, attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony to recognize the farmers and organizers behind the return, a nod to how much weight this one weekly gathering carries for a community still rebuilding storefront by storefront.
The Market Returned After the Village's Comeback
The market's return came four days after Palisades Village reopened, but that timing was separate from the choice of weekday. The Village itself had been closed since the fire hit, and Caruso invested roughly $100 million restoring it, dealing with smoke damage in wall cavities and ductwork that made the building unusable long after the flames were out. By early July 2026, the property was 99 percent leased, and Caruso has said business at the reopened Village has outpaced pre-wildfire foot traffic and sales by three times, though that figure comes from Caruso's own comments and has not been independently audited.
About 60 percent of the Village's original tenants returned. Some did not return: Aerin, Aesop, Lululemon and Saint Laurent. In their place, the property picked up a run of new names, including Nancy Silverton's Spacca Tutto, her first restaurant on the Westside, along with Mother's first stand-alone Los Angeles store and a first-ever flagship for the apparel brand Xirena. Elyse Walker's original boutique, destroyed in the fire after 25 years on the same block, also returned as a new flagship inside the Village.
None of that determined the farmers market's day of the week. Swarthmore Avenue itself had been unusable while the Village sat closed; the weekday decision, as Farwell explained, came down to the vendors' calendars.
If You're Planning Your Week Around It
For now, the market runs Wednesdays from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. at 1035 Swarthmore Avenue, with free parking available in the Palisades Village underground garage with validation. That is a real change from the pre-fire rhythm of Sunday mornings from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., and it is worth building into your week deliberately rather than assuming the old habit still applies.
Farwell has said Raw Inspiration wants to bring the Sunday market back eventually, but organizers are waiting to see how turnout on Wednesdays goes before making that call. If you loved this market for the unhurried Sunday version of it, the version that exists right now is intentionally smaller and scheduled around what keeps farmers coming back, not around what residents remember. Check before you build a new routine around it.
The Palisades has spent the better part of two years rebuilding in fragments: a home here, a storefront there, a market stall that moved to Brentwood and back. Watching which of those fragments return, and on what terms, tells you as much about the neighborhood's actual pace of recovery as any headline about a grand reopening. If you're thinking about what that recovery means for your own property, whether you're weighing a move back, a sale, or simply want a clear read on where things stand, Denise Marks Group knows this market street by street. Request your free home valuation and get a straight answer.
