Walk into Oaks by the Bay Park on a Saturday morning and the first thing you notice isn't the vendors. It's the oak. The tree at the center of the park is estimated at 250 years old, wide enough that its shade covers half the market before 10 a.m., and it hasn't gone anywhere in longer than anyone selling tomatoes underneath it has been alive. Everything else in St. Andrews rotates around that fact more than most residents probably realize.
The Market at St. Andrews sets up here every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and it has held this exact spot at 2715 W 10th St since May 2022. That's not a small detail. Across the bay in downtown, the city's other Saturday market spent years being pushed around by park construction before the Panama City Commission finally voted, unanimously, on March 10, 2026, to give it a permanent home on Harrison Avenue. St. Andrews never had that problem. Its market has just sat there, under the same tree, for over four years, and that stability is the reason the neighborhood's Saturday feels less like an event and more like a habit.
Two Markets, and Only One Confusion
If you've ever told a friend you're "heading to the farmers market" without specifying which one, you're not alone. Panama City actually runs two separate Saturday markets, and they get mixed up constantly.
The Market at St. Andrews is the one on Beck Avenue and W 10th Street, run through the Historic St. Andrews Waterfront Partnership. It started back in 2004 as a small operation at the St. Andrews Marina, grew enough by 2011 to spread onto the Yacht Basin boardwalk, took its current name in January 2019, and settled at Oaks by the Bay Park in May 2022. Four years in the same park is a long run for an event that spent its first fifteen years relocating every few seasons.
The Panama City Farmers' Market is the other one, and it's had a rougher few years. Construction at McKenzie Park pushed it out temporarily, and vendors and shoppers were left checking social media each week to find out where it had landed. That uncertainty ended this spring. The March 10 vote designated Harrison Avenue as its permanent address, with the market rotating between two sections of the street through 2026 so downtown businesses on both blocks get a turn at the foot traffic.
Here's the useful part for anyone living in St. Andrews: none of that disruption touched you. While downtown was sorting out where its market would even be, the market five minutes from your front door was quietly building four straight years of the exact same Saturday morning.
| Saturday market | Where | Hours | Anchored since |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Market at St. Andrews | Oaks by the Bay Park, 2715 W 10th St | 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. | May 2022 |
| Panama City Farmers' Market | Harrison Avenue (rotating blocks) | Historically 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. | Permanent as of March 2026 |
What Grew Up Around the One That Stayed Put
A market that doesn't move gives the businesses around it something to build a rhythm on, and Beck Avenue has clearly used the last four years to do exactly that.
Uncle Ernie's Bayfront Grill and Brew House sits right on the marina, close enough to the market that the crowd tends to drift there once the vendors start packing up. This year the restaurant pushed its hours to close at 10 p.m. and added live music every single night of the week, not just weekends. The August lineup names a different performer for each night: Chris Wade on Mondays, Jon White on Tuesdays, Jeff Bouet on Wednesdays, David Yunker on Thursdays, Brooke Washor on Fridays, Jamah Terry on Saturdays, and Hanson LeBouf closing out Sundays. That's not a rotating cast of fill-ins. It's a fixed schedule, which only makes sense for a venue that expects the same regulars to show up on the same nights.
A few blocks over, The Grocery Kitchen & Taproom occupies a building that's been standing since 1928, when it opened as a grocery store called Serve-You-Well. Owner Kay Parker Brackett comes from a family that's been in Panama City since 1947, her father among the original owners of the old Miracle Strip Amusement Park. The restaurant runs Sunday brunch from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., which means the Saturday market crowd and the Sunday brunch crowd overlap by exactly one day of rest.
Then there's Captain's Table Fish House on Beck Avenue, which has the longest memory of any business in the neighborhood. The story goes back to the 1930s, when a $75 wedding gift let one woman buy the building and open it as a seafood restaurant. Her descendants still run it. Hurricane Michael took the original structure down in 2018, and it took three years of rebuilding before the restaurant reopened under the same name and the same family. Ninety years of continuity survived one storm and came back anyway, which says something about how this particular stretch of Beck Avenue treats permanence.
The Evening Half of the Same Day
St. Andrews doesn't shut down when the market packs up at 1 p.m. The day just changes shape.
Oaks by the Bay Park has hosted sunset yoga sessions through the city's recreation calendar this summer, the most recent one running from 6 to 7 p.m. on August 20. It's a small, unglamorous detail, but it means the park that opens the day with produce stands closes it with people stretching on the boardwalk as the light goes orange over the bay. On select Saturdays, Sound Collective at 1113 Beck Ave runs an evening alley market that gives the neighborhood a second commercial moment after dark, distinct from the morning farmers market and clearly aimed at a different crowd.
By the time the sun is actually down, Uncle Ernie's deck fills in. The restaurant markets itself around what it calls Bay County's best sunset views, and the claim is at least plausible from a table facing the marina. Between the extended hours, the nightly named performers, and the direct sightline to the water, the restaurant has essentially built its whole evening business around the fact that people are already outside in St. Andrews when the sun goes down, not driving in for it.
A Calendar That Runs Deeper Than the Market
The permanence extends past food and music. Keep St Andrews Salty, a local community effort distinct from both the market and the historic Mardi Gras krewe, organized a citywide edition of Worldwide Play Music on the Porch Day this past Saturday, August 29, with musicians performing on merchants' front and back porches across the district. The same group has an art-focused event coming up on Friday, September 4, from noon to 6 p.m., inviting residents to bring a creative project and work on it anywhere in St. Andrews for the afternoon.
None of these events depend on tourism traffic or a marketing push. They're organized by neighbors, for neighbors, on a schedule that assumes people already live here and will show up again next month. That's a different kind of institution than a seasonal festival built for visitors. It's closer to what the market itself has become: a fixture that works precisely because nobody has had to relocate it, rename it, or explain where it went this year.
Why the Stability Is the Story
The easy version of this piece would be a list of good places to eat on a Saturday in St. Andrews, and there's no shortage of those. But the more interesting fact is the one underneath it. Downtown Panama City just spent years figuring out where its Saturday morning belongs, and only settled the question this past March. St. Andrews solved that problem back in 2022 and has spent every Saturday since building on top of the answer instead of searching for it. The restaurants extended their hours. The performers got a fixed weekly slot. The community groups planned events months out because they could count on the neighborhood still looking the same when the date arrived.
That's the version of St. Andrews that residents actually experience: not a rotating cast of pop-ups chasing foot traffic, but a handful of institutions that decided years ago exactly where they'd be every Saturday and never had reason to reconsider. If you already live in the Panama City area and split your weekends between St. Andrews and the Downtown side of the bay, you've probably felt the difference without naming it. Downtown's Saturday just got settled. St. Andrews' has been settled the whole time.
For more on what makes this stretch of St. Andrews Bay tick, or if a friend or family member is weighing a move to this side of Panama City, Gillman Group Realty is always glad to talk through what a neighborhood actually feels like day to day. Contact us anytime.
