The Williams Grove Farmers Flea Market is set to open Sunday with new rules for customers after the market was shut down for weeks.
The market is asking all customers to adhere to CDC guidelines that include wearing a mask and keeping a distance from others. It will also work to keep more space between vendors to respect social distancing.
"Our hope is to have them skip a space and that way we'll have as much distance as we can between the vendors," said Tony Thoman of Williams Grove Farmers Flea Market. Thoman said plexiglass will also be added to drink stations and customers will be given 'one-time' use containers.
"We put hand sanitizers and hand wash stations in place in all of our portable toilet areas," said Thoman.
The flea market is located in Cumberland County, which is currently listed in the 'red zone' of the state.
"We feel that we fit into the essential in that we are a farmers flea market. Farmers flea markets across Central Pennsylvania have been open," said Thoman.
Thoman said the flea market helps sustain the organization year-round and that the market's phone has been ringing off the hook for the past 2 weeks as word spread around town that they were considering reopening.
"We have bills to pay," said Thoman, who later added "it (the flea market) helps pay our mortgage and other bills. We have an $8,000 mortgage."
Thoman said the decisions to both shutdown and to open back up were not made easily.
"We wrestled with from the beginning, how are we going to sustain the organization?"
Thoman said volunteers are already working to make plans if the flea market would grow so popular that it would put social distancing measures at risk.
"We have over 700 spaces in our flea market and we're going to do our darndest to spread them out," said Thoman. He said there are also 94 acres of land on the property, "we'll put paint lines down in the grass if we have to. Our goal is to protect everybody."
