Centre Markets is ready to make a long-planned move to Pine Grove Mills.
The local food hub’s last day inside the Nittany Mall will be 1 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 26, owner Sabine Carey wrote in a message to customers this week. Carey and her team will then move equipment and inventory to Centre Markets’ new home in a renovated 1850s building at 112 W. Pine Grove Rd.
Final inspections and permitting are underway, and Carey anticipates a mid-November opening at the new location.
After four years as an online-only farmers market, Centre Markets opened its first storefront in the mall in April 2024, offering locally produced meat, dairy, vegetables, fruit, specialty prepared foods, beverages and body care products.
“The mall has given us so much more than we expected: new customers, new friends, and a wonderfully supportive community of daily walkers, shopkeepers, and shoppers who’ve made it such a friendly, welcoming place,” Carey wrote. “We’ll truly miss it.”
The location, though, was always intended to be temporary.
Since 2023, a two-phase project has been in the works for the Pine Grove Mills location. The first will provide the new home for Centre Markets’ retail store. The second will create space for Centre Kitchen Collective, a nonprofit founded by Carey Elaine Meder-Wilgus of Webster’s Bookstore Café, that will offer a shared-use incubator kitchen.
Buildout on the Centre Kitchen Collective space is expected to begin soon, and when completed it will provide “a place for local food makers and farmers to create, collaborate, and grow their small businesses – and for our community to gather and learn around food,” Carey wrote.
For Centre Markets, meanwhile, Carey plans for pickups and deliveries of online market orders to continue uninterrupted while the new storefront is readied. Customers will be updated when new pickup details are finalized.
