The Portland Saturday Market and Portland Skidmore Market are a pair of seasonal outdoor arts, crafts, and

food markets Food marketing is the marketing of food products. It brings together the food producer and the consumer through a chain of marketing activities. Background Pomeranz & Adler, 2015, defines food marketing as a chain of marketing activities ...

Portland, Oregon Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...

held every Saturday from March through December. The Saturday Market is the largest continuously operated outdoor market in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. The Saturday Market is located in

Tom McCall Waterfront Park Governor Tom McCall Waterfront Park is a park located in downtown Portland, Oregon, along the Willamette River. After the 1974 removal of Harbor Drive, a major milestone in the freeway removal movement, the park was opened to the public in 19 ...

underneath and to the south of the

Burnside Bridge The Burnside Bridge is a 1926-built bascule bridge that spans the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, United States, carrying Burnside Street. It is the second bridge at the same site to carry that name. It was added to the National Register o ...

, and the Skidmore Market is located in an adjacent plaza just across

Naito Parkway Naito Parkway is a major thoroughfare of Portland in the U.S. state of Oregon. It was formerly known as Front Avenue and Front Street and was renamed in 1996 to honor Bill Naito. It runs between SW Barbur Boulevard and NW Front Avenue, and adja ...

, extending west to the

Skidmore Fountain The Skidmore Fountain is a historic fountain in Portland, Oregon, United States. The fountain is a contributing property of and the namesake for the Skidmore/Old Town Historic District, which is also a National Historic Landmark. The fountain ...

. Admission to both markets are free, and those who spend over $25.00 can receive either a free

TriMet The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon (TriMet) is a Transit district, transit agency that serves most of the Oregon part of the Portland metropolitan area. Created in 1969 by the Oregon Legislative Assembly, Oregon legi ...

transit ticket or validated parking at SmartPark garages. The markets combined have over 400 members and generate an estimated $12 million in gross sales annually. They have become a central economic engine for the historic

Old Town Chinatown Old Town Chinatown is the official Chinatown of the Northwest Portland, northwest section of Portland, Oregon, Portland, Oregon, United States. The Willamette River forms its eastern boundary, separating it from the Lloyd District, Portland, Oreg ...

neighborhood, and attract an estimated 750,000 visitors to the area each year.

Structure and mission

The Portland Saturday Market is a mutual-benefit non-tax-exempt nonprofit owned and run by the Members of the market. The Board of Directors and various committees are all run by members of the market, utilizing a democratic process. The focus of the market is on hand-crafted goods sold by the artisans who design and make them. The mission of the Portland Saturday Market is to provide an environment that encourages the economic and artistic growth of emerging and accomplished artisans. Central to this mission shall be to operate a marketplace. That marketplace, and other market programs, shall honor craftsmanship, design innovation, marketing ethics, and authenticity of the product.

History

The Saturday Market was founded in 1974 by craftspeople Sheri Teasdale and Andrea Scharf, who modeled it after the Saturday Market in

Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lane County, Oregon, United States. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie River (Oregon), McKenzie and Willamette River, Willamette rivers, ...

. It was founded as a mutual benefit corporation, under which all members would share in the cost and governance of the market, yet keep all profits they receive from selling their items. All items sold at the Saturday Market are required to be handmade by the person selling it, and a committee of members judge each new item against a minimum standard of quality. The Skidmore Market was organized in 1997 and is run by Skidmore Market Management LLC, a private company. Unlike the Saturday Market, artisans are permitted to sell imported products. Sock It To Me, a sock and apparel company based out of Portland, started at the Saturday Market. In 2024, the market was designated an Oregon Heritage Tradition by the

Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission The Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission (OCHC) is a non-profit organization based in the U.S. state of Oregon. The commission was formed in 1988 in order to discover and commemorate important literary and cultural contributions to Oregon's histor ...

Location

The group did not have a location for the market, until

Bill Naito William Sumio Naito (September 16, 1925 – May 8, 1996) was an American businessman, civic leader and philanthropist in Portland, Oregon, U.S. He was an enthusiastic advocate for investment in downtown Portland, both private and public, and ...

offered them a parking lot known as the "Butterfly lot". A large butterfly mural hangs over the market today commemorating the past. For the first year that the market operated, there was no specific site plan. A board of directors was established and the first chair was Scott Nay who worked in the Human Resources Department in the city of Portland. He was instrumental in hiring the first market manager Dana Comfort who along with a well chosen staff began to organize the site by and under the Burnside Bridge. A clear site plan was eventually created, marking out booth spaces, defining aisles and a pattern for customer traffic. In 1976, the market moved to a site under the Burnside Bridge between First Avenue and Front Avenue (now Naito Parkway), where it then remained for the next 33 years.

Relocation in 2009

In April 2005, the

Portland Development Commission Prosper Portland, formerly the Portland Development Commission (PDC), is the community development corporation created by the city of Portland, Oregon. It promotes development, housing projects and economic development within the city's eleven ur ...

and Portland Saturday Market began a study of potential sites that serve as a permanent location for the Saturday Market. Although the market had already been operating for three decades, it had always existed on a patchwork of short-term

lease A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the user (referred to as the ''lessee'') to pay the owner (referred to as the ''lessor'') for the use of an asset. Property, buildings and vehicles are common assets that are leased. Industrial ...

s with private property owners, providing little or no long-term certainty. That situation was viewed as a disincentive to

capital investment Investment is traditionally defined as the "commitment of resources into something expected to gain value over time". If an investment involves money, then it can be defined as a "commitment of money to receive more money later". From a broade ...

, due to a lack of mid-week activities on the site, and as reinforcing adverse social conditions, creating an unsafe area within the neighborhood along with the additional burden of weekly cleaning of the site before Market use. The long-range major goals for the Market included: a permanent location, improved infrastructure, and more protection from the weather, needing to be met in a cost-efficient manner. In October 2005, the city launched its own study, called the "Ankeny/Burnside Development Framework Project", to assess the opportunities for the area and how best to direct public funding to increase private investment. The recommendations from these studies eventually led to a plan which would move the market out of the space under the

at First Avenue, to a new space one block east, in

, and include construction of an open-side shelter (called a "pavilion" by market representatives) to provide 8,000 square feet of semi-weather-protected space immediately south of the bridge.

Ankeny Square Ankeny Square is part of the North Park Blocks in Portland, Oregon. The square is south of Burnside Street. One local reporter described it as "a little nub of SW Ankeny Street between Broadway and Park". In 2014, the square was home to a food ...

, the small plaza located between the Skidmore Fountain and Naito Parkway, would continue to be used for vendor booths each weekend, in addition to the larger space to the east of Naito Parkway, within the park. The move would increase the number of craft-vendor spaces slightly, from 255 to 275. The intention was that Waterfront Park would lease the pavilion to the market on the weekends during the market season, while also leasing the area for other projects during the week. The project was overseen by the Portland Development Commission, who had recently concluded a three-year study on possible permanent locations. Also under the project's umbrella was an accommodation for the headquarters of

Mercy Corps Mercy Corps is a global non-governmental, humanitarian aid organization operating in transitional contexts that have undergone, or have been undergoing, various forms of economic, environmental, social and political instabilities. The organizati ...

. At the beginning of the 2009 season, the new space was not ready for use, so the market opened temporarily at its old location. In May 2009, Saturday Market moved into its new location in Waterfront Park. Ankeny Plaza, a relatively small portion of the market, was retained as part of the reconfigured market and is used by about 50 vendors each weekend. In August 2009, a new public fountain was brought into use next to the market's space, in the park at Ash Street, named the Bill Naito Legacy Fountain in honor of Portland businessman and civic leader

, who had also been one of the Saturday Market's early supporters.

Sundays

The Markets operated Sundays from 1977 to 2020, when the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

caused many older vendors to retire from the market. Both markets reopened Sundays for the 2024 year, though temporarily closed again for the 2025 year due to low customer turnout.

References

External links

* {{Coord, 45.5225, -122.6699, type:landmark_region:US-OR_source:googlemaps, display=title 1974 establishments in Oregon Busking venues Culture of Portland, Oregon Economy of Portland, Oregon Old Town Chinatown Southwest Portland, Oregon Tom McCall Waterfront Park Tourist attractions in Portland, Oregon