The Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA) will continue to run the Baltimore Farmers’ Market for all of 2025, despite an announcement in January that it would no longer do so.Robyn Murphy, BOPA’s interim CEO and board chair, said at a board meeting on Wednesday that the city and BOPA have jointly decided to have BOPA continue as the manager this year in order to avoid any interruption to the market’s schedule and operations. For years, the weekly market has been held beneath the Jones Falls Expressway at Holliday and Saratoga streets on Sunday mornings from April to December, and BOPA has been its operator. Last fall, the mayor’s office terminated BOPA’s contract to serve as the city’s events producer, film office and arts council but later retained it to serve as the city’s arts council and to staff the Public Art Commission. As a result of the decision regarding the farmers’ market, Murphy said, the market is on target to reopen after its winter hiatus on April 13 as previously planned.Murphy told her board in January that BOPA would not run the market in 2025 and that the Baltimore Development Corp. (BDC) would issue a Request for Proposals from other groups or organizations that would like to operate the market starting in the spring of 2025.Murphy and Tonya Miller Hall, the mayor’s Senior Advisor for Arts and Culture, said on Wednesday that the BDC received eight proposals that met a Feb. 21 deadline. But the city and BOPA decided that BOPA should continue as the operator for 2025, Murphy said, because there wasn’t much time between February and April 13 to ensure a smooth transition with a different operator. Murphy said continuing with BOPA as the operator in 2025 will give the city more time to consider a possible change in operators starting in 2026, but for now the market will be able to line up vendors and open in April as expected. “Ultimately we collectively determined with the city and BOPA that the short handoff time would be negatively impactful to the continuity of the market, so that means that BOPA is managing the Farmers’ Market in 2025,” Murphy said. “We will still work with the city and the people who submitted [proposals] to determine after 2025, and then we’ll have a longer runway to give the new vendor an opportunity to familiarize themselves and set them up for success for the market. But for the entirety of 2025, we will be managing the Farmers’ Market.”Vendor applications have been “significantly up” up for the market for 2025, Murphy added.“The acceptances went out and as of this morning almost 70 percent of the contracts have been returned, signed, and many of the vendors have already started paying their vendors’ fees,” she said. ...read more read less