Salt Lake City plan for a year-round Downtown Farmers Market building fizzles

SALT LAKE CITY — Pioneer Park will reopen next week with a brand new look, but a proposed future addition won't be joining it after all.

The Salt Lake City Downtown Alliance announced Tuesday that it is ending its effort to construct a permanent market building at the park, 350 S. 300 West, citing the inability to figure out who would own the structure.

"There wasn't a construction and ownership structure that met the needs of both the city and the alliance, so that effort has come to a close," the organization wrote in a statement.

Finances were another key factor in the project fizzling, said Blake Thomas, Salt Lake City's senior advisor on real estate and capital projects.

"Ultimately, I think it came down to the funding," he told KSL. "The city didn't have a budget allocation or earmark funding to construct the building. As it progressed, it came to a point where the (Downtown Alliance) deemed the financing infeasible."

The Downtown Alliance, a nonprofit that seeks to boost downtown activity, announced its goal to build a market building at Pioneer Park in May 2025.

It even reached a memorandum of understanding with Salt Lake City to create a new public-private partnership that called on the Downtown Alliance to manage future park operations.

"Pioneer Park has endured a bad reputation for decades. We know we can change the chemistry of the park. We have done it every summer Saturday for 34 years with the Downtown Farmers Market," said Dee Brewer, the nonprofit's director.

Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall endorsed the estimated $20 million to $25 million project, saying that the market could be regularly held on weekdays for the first time to boost activity at the park.

However, it still needed a series of city approvals before moving forward. Those conversations lasted for a year and a half, but ultimately led nowhere, leading to Tuesday's announcement.

The city is open to returning to the idea if the funding situation changed, Thomas said.

If there's a silver lining from the project's demise, it could be the attention to the park's recent upgrades. The park closed earlier this year for a monthslong overhaul, which is set to be complete on Nov. 13.

"One positive thing is the improvements that are about to be made public ... are all things that implicitly activate the park and make it more family-friendly," he said, adding that he believes there might be more opportunities for the two sides to hold pop-up events at the park when it reopens.

Meanwhile, the Downtown Alliance added that it's now shifting its focus to a permanent winter market home. It's returning to the old Leonardo Museum building, 209 E. 500 South, for the second consecutive winter, which became an emergency option last year.

"The goal behind (a permanent market) hasn't gone anywhere," the nonprofit wrote. "A permanent home for the winter market is still what we're after, and we're working with the city on exactly that."

The city is open to making the old museum the permanent winter site after a strong debut last year, Thomas said. It recently scrapped two historic planes that were housed there to clear up space for it.

This year's weekly winter market begins on Nov. 14, a day after Pioneer Park reopens.

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