On a recentSaturday morning, hundreds of people at a St. Petersburg market strolled through the sea of tents, sampling hummus and haggling for the best price on “Kpop Demon Hunters” merch and Hooters memorabilia.
The Pinellas Farmers and Flea Market, though,doesn’t take place downtown or in a park. From 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. each Saturday and Sunday, the event swallows up a chunk of the parking lot outside of Win! Derby, the poker room at the former site of the Derby Lane dog track.
It’s just one of many new festivals, markets and events that emerged in the last few months at the century-old space.
Derby Lane opened in 1925 and became the country’s longest continually running greyhound track. It transformed into a set for movies like 2016’s “The Infiltrator,” starring Bryan Cranston, and 1990’s “Coupe de Ville,” starring Patrick Dempsey. When George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Carl Reiner came to Derby Lane to film “Ocean’s 11” in 2001, the parking lot turned into the site of a circus acrobat show.
Now that same parking lot at 10490 Gandy Blvd. in St. Petersburg is in the midst of another transformation.
In 2018, Florida voters approved a ban on greyhound racing; after the end of 2020, when the practice finally ended, the poker room was rebranded to “Win! Derby,” said Sagi Genger, CEO of Rally Development.
Last April, the St. Petersburg Kennel Club Inc. (which owned Derby Lane) merged with Rally. Part of the land had been used to stage Amazon delivery trucks. Now Genger said his company plans to transform the area into an entertainment district.
The casino only takes up one of acre on the 130-acre property, Genger said. Some of the land is designated for conservation, but 94 acres are eligible for redevelopment.
“It’s been sitting there fallow for years,” Genger said. “There’s no reason from the community as a whole not to benefit from it.”
About 11,000 people visit Win! Derby a week, Genger said. New events — including food truck rallies, cultural festivals and Porsche and BMW racing clubs — have brought in an additional 5,000 to 10,000 people a week.
Genger knew he was on to something special after Win! Derby’s lot filled with cars while hosting its first Asian night market.
“Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how many people showed up, because our counter stopped working,” he said. “We think it was about 18,000 people over a couple of days.”
When it comes to future development of the land, Rally has received “between a dozen or 20 serious proposals from very serious people.” A finalist will be announced in the coming weeks — and ideally, the redeveloped space would allow space for the markets to continue.
“We took a space that was really dead and turned it into something that’s really vibrant,” Genger said. “Hopefully as we develop the property we can make it a more attractive place to visit.”
Many of the antique vendors at the new weekend farmers market previously worked at the Wagon Wheel Flea Market in Pinellas Park, which closed in 2020 after five decades in business.
Mark “Mookie” Wilson, who runs Mookie’s Kettle Korn, was one of them.
“I have a lot of regular customers, and I still have some new customers,” he said. “I particularly like this location because the aisles are nice and wide. A lot of the customers that come there for the farmers market have strollers or wagons or animals.”
Ester Venouziou, who hosts events like Shopapalooza Festival with her company LocalShops1, called the area an “event planner’s dream.”
“We don’t know how long it will be around,” she said. “That’s really the only negative for the space.”
Her upcoming Florida Foodies Fest on April 11 and 12 will feature a pie-eating contest, pasta-making demos and classes from local beekeepers. There will be a DJ and between 100 and 200 vendors, all in a field behind the building, instead of the front parking lot where the farmers market posts up.
She’s especially excited to host a Florida Weiner Dog Derby on the first day of her festival.
“We figured, you know, its a derby, at Derby Lane,” she said. “So we gotta do it.”
The Pinellas Farmers and Flea Market takes place outside of Win! Derby (10490 Gandy Blvd., St. Petersburg) from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday and Sunday. It features a farmers market, flea market and food court. Visit pinellasmarket.com for more information.
Florida Foodies Fest runs from11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 11, and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 12. The festival takes place behind the Win! Derby building; Admission is free.
To learn more about other upcoming festivals and events, visit win-derby.com/events-at-win-derby.