PORT ANGELES — Customers trickled into a parking lot off West Front Street Saturday morning to the impromptu location of the downtown Saturday Port Angeles Farmers Market.
Keith Wollen of Port Angeles, a regular farmers market customer since 1988, almost missed the new spot.
“Glad you found us,” said Sam Crossley, a market vendor who runs the Elwha Apiary stand.
“It wasn’t easy,” Wollen said.
On Friday, a judge approved a temporary restraining order prohibiting the farmers market from setting up shop at what has become its regular, and divisive, location on Laurel Street.
The ruling by Clallam County Superior Court Commissioner Gary Sund will last until Thursday, when the next court date has been set.
Signs were placed on Laurel Street informing customers that the farmers market had moved to the parking lot, which sits below street level between Zaks tavern and Budget CDs & Tapes.
“Not being a frequenter of bars, I didn’t know what Zaks was,” Wollen, a retired Washington State University professor, said.
Another court hearing before Sund on the farmers market’s conditional use permit is set for 9 a.m. Thursday in Clallam County Superior Court.
The date was chosen because it is after the Port Angeles Planning Commission’s Wednesday public hearing on extending for one year the market’s conditional use permit granted July 28, 2004.
The permit allows the farmers market to close a block of Laurel Street between Front and First streets from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays.