Downtowners tired of combing grocery stores for fresh produce will soon have an alternative: The World Trade Center Greenmarket is returning to Zuccotti Park.
The Greenmarket vendors will open shop Tues., April 1 and will return Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout the summer. Local residents and workers will be able to find a wide array of plants, baked goods and fresh fruits and vegetables. The market’s three trucks will pull up on the south side of Zuccotti Park, along Cedar St. between Trinity Place and Broadway.
The Greenmarket would prefer to move to the northern side of the park, said Cathy Chambers, director of operations for the Greenmarket, at the Community Board 1 Financial District Committee meeting March 5. In that location, the Greenmarket would have room for an additional two tents, added Michael Hurwitz, the Greenmarket director. But Brookfield Properties, which owns 1 Liberty Plaza, is concerned about the safety of having trucks approach the building.
“They want it to be a vendor-free zone,” Chambers said.
Meanwhile, idling black cars, rather than vendors, line that block, several committee members said.
“I would rather see a Greenmarket…than black cars on the north side of Zuccotti Park,” said Ro Sheffe, chairperson of the Financial District Committee.
After being displaced on 9/11, the Greenmarket, considerably shrunken from its original 12 to 15 trucks, moved to Zuccotti Park (then called Liberty Plaza) and later moved to Church St. by the PATH entrance. The Greenmarket returned to Zuccotti Park last August for half a season, representing a return to its “former glory days,” said Catherine McVay Hughes, C.B. 1 World Trade Center Committee chairperson.
But Hughes reminded the Financial District committee that the Greenmarket still needs to find a permanent location at the rebuilt World Trade Center site.
“This is a stop-gap measure,” Hughes said. The Greenmarket currently only has three farmers, but they provide Lower Manhattan with a crucial source of fresh fruits and vegetables, she said.
The board unanimously supported the Greenmarket and passed a resolution advocating for a larger, permanent market at the new World Trade Center.
— Julie Shapiro
