The EAV Farmers' Market, a popular Village draw since 2005, is relocating to an empty lot on Flat Shoals Avenue near the intersection of May Avenue.

The market operated from the parking lot of the old East Atlanta Ace Hardware on Glenwood Avenue but lost that space when the store closed.

Katie Hayes, director of the the Community Farmers Markets, said the new location, a gravel lot owned by Georgia Power, is larger, allowing for more vendors.

"In the back we have green space that we'll be able to put picnic tables and landscape so it's a nicer area," she said Tuesday night at a meeting of the East Atlanta Community Association.

The farmers' market starts up again this year on May 5.

Hayes also said CFM, along EACA, with obtained a two-year $50,000 grant to do educational outreach and create community gardens in East Atlanta.

They have identified five sites, including McNair High School, Burgess-Peterson Academy and the Brannen Towers senior living building for those outreach campaigns.

Hayes and Andy Schneggenburger, EACA's land use and zoning committee chairman, gave an update on a pending ordinance — still in draft form — on farmers' markets curently being discussed by the Atlanta City Council.

The proposed ordinance gives more definition to what farmers' markets are, Schneggenburger said.

For example, it stipulates at least 75 percent of the retail products for sale by individual vendors must be produced by that vendor.

The city sought to craft an ordinance because it "did not have any sort of regulatory structure for farmers markets," Schneggenburger said, explaining it's still in draft form and that the City Council is still looking for community input.

The proposal has other changes in it including relaxing parking requirements for farmers' markets that are in more pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods, he said.