BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Popular Williamsburg food
fair Smorgasburg will have to
compete for its space in Marsha
P. Johnson State Park this
year, as greenspace gurus in
Albany plan to solicit bids for
grub makers to set up shop
at the Kent Avenue lawn this
summer.
New York State Parks offi -
cials are drafting a new request
for proposal for companies to
host a food market with the appropriate
COVID-19 safety measures
in place at the waterfront
space between N. Seventh and
N. Eighth streets.
“State Parks is fi nalizing a
request for proposals to operate
a food fair at Marsha P. Johnson
State Park. The RFP, which
will be open to all qualifi ed bidders,
is expected to be issued in
the coming weeks,” said agency
rep Dan Keefe in an email.
The state has leased the
park’s concrete slabs to Smorgasburg
COURIER L 14 IFE, MARCH 5-11, 2021
on weekends during
the warmer months since 2013,
drawing thousands of Brooklynites
and visitors to the
space every year — except for
last year, when offi cials did not
permit in-person events due to
the pandemic.
A senior agency rep fi rst publicly
fl oated the idea of trying to
fi nd a new partner at a January
virtual Community Board
1 meeting about the park’s controversial
six-month, $14 million
overhaul, which north
Brooklynites at the time lambasted
as a pricey vanity project
by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“We are entertaining the
notion — depending on COVID
— of issuing an RFP for a food
fair. Again, it would only happen
safely depending on what
the status of the coronavirus
is for 2021,” the state agency’s
director for New York City
Leslie Wright told the civic
panel on Jan. 12. “That would
be a public RFP and anyone is
welcome to apply.”
Wright at a previous meeting
told CB1 that Smorgasburg
had been a reliable partner
over the years, shooting down
some area residents’s calls to
pause the event on select summer
weekends to give locals a
relief from the crowds.
Keefe did not go into the specifi
cs of why Parks was going
through the trouble of drawing
up a whole new bidding process,
rather than just renewing
the company’s annual permit
as it has done for the better part
of the decade.
“The agency periodically
issues RFPs to explore and review
potential options to help
ensure we’re providing the best
experience for park visitors,”
the spokesman said.
Smorgasburg co-founder
Eric Demby told Brooklyn Paper
he’ll submit a response to
the RFP, and hopes to bring
Smorgasburg at Marsha P. Johnson State Park before the pandemic.
File photo by Scott Lynch
back Smorgasburg’s locations
in and outside the borough in
late spring or early summer.
But when asked why he thought
Parks was making him contend
for the north Brooklyn lot he’s
held for years, he simply said,
“Don’t have an answer for that
one, honestly.”
The weekly fest has attracted
thousands of foodies
to the neighborhood every
Saturday from April through
October before the pandemic,
and has grown with another
busy market in Prospect Park
on Sundays, along with indoor
venues during the winter and
new outposts in other boroughs
and beyond.
The weekend crowds prepandemic
irked some locals
who said Smorgasburg unfairly
monopolized the space during
primetime usage of the park,
leading them to issue their demands
for some summertime
Saturdays without the grub
market — however, Wright last
year maintained that the state
park was for all New Yorkers to
enjoy, not just nearby residents.
“The answer is no,” she said
defi nitively.
No more smorg?
State to solicit bids for Smorgasburg park
space in Williamsburg this year
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