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SOAR and Daley Plaza Openings Will Make Downtown Chicago More Local
- Bob Benenson
- May 17
- 4 min read
Read Why These are Two Artful Farmers Markets are Among My Favorites
As frequent Local Food Forum readers surely know, I am a farmers market fanatic. So I was truly excited to learn that SOAR Farmers Market — one of the small handful of farmers markets in downtown Chicago and a personal favorite — would be opening for the season early.
That opening is coming up Tuesday (May 19), two weeks earlier that its longstanding kickoff on the first Tuesday in June. The market's fall season also is being extended a week, to November 4.
One of the major things that the SOAR Farmers Market has going for it is its location. It is open on Tuesdays, from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., on the plaza in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art, or MCA, in the Streeterville neighborhood (SOAR stands for Streeterville Organization of Active Residents). It is one long block east of Michigan Ave.’s Magnificent Mile and the historic Water Tower.
The market combines Chicago’s urban vibrancy with the relaxed ambiance of a neighborhood farmers market — or even a country fair. Shoppers can find many of the leading Chicago-area farmers market vendors, including Nichols Farm and Orchard (Marengo, Illinois), Ellis Family Farms (Benton Harbor, Michigan), Smits Farms (Chicago Heights, Illinois), Finn's Ranch (Buchanan, Michigan), River Valley Ranch Mushrooms (Burlington, Wisconsin), Phoenix Bean Tofu (Chicago), and Stamper Cheese (Chicago).
It is also super-convenient for me to get there by bus from our Lakeview home. Nonetheless, I was only vaguely aware of SOAR Market's existence over the first few years after it opened on the MCA Plaza in 2015.
Green City Market, half as far from my apartment, had been my regular haunt since we moved to Chicago in 2011 (and continues to be my local market). I did commute downtown for four years starting in 2016, but the office of the non-profit where I worked was at the far western end of downtown — meaning if I stopped at SOAR on the way in, I'd have had to haul my heavy load to work and then home hours later.
It was the COVID pandemic that turned me in to a SOAR Farmers Market regular. Green City Market in 2020 was open only on Saturdays, its longstanding Wednesday market canceled for that year, and a number of other weekday markets never opened at all during the crisis. The fact that SOAR provided a mid-week alternative spared me from having to load up a week’s worth of market haul during those Saturday Green City visits.
Before long, working from home became a permanent status, which makes it easy for me to drop in on SOAR any Tuesday that I please.
Click below to visit SOAR Farmers Market's website.
But wait, there's more. Making next week even more special for downtown Chicago local food lovers is the season opener on Thursday (May 21) of the legendary Daley Plaza Farmers Market in The Loop. Like the SOAR Market, the Daley Plaza Market's hours are 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
This flagship of the public Chicago Farmers Markets first opened in 1978, when most people hadn't even heard of farmers markets. At ground level, its tents and food-laden tables resemble most other farmers markets (many of the SOAR Market vendors also sell at Daley Plaza).
What set it apart is that those farmstands surround a world-famous work of art: the towering, mysterious steel sculpture by Pablo Picasso. The piece, in what was then known as the Chicago Civic Center, was unveiled with much fanfare in 1967 by Richard J. Daley, the powerful and controversial longtime mayor. Shortly after the mayor's sudden death in 1976, the government building was renamed as the Richard J. Daley Center, with the plaza that has long housed the farmers market also renamed for him.
The sculpture was not uncontroversial then, facing questions like, “What is this thing supposed to be, and does it belong in the middle of Chicago’s civic center?” And it still raises some questions today like, “We still don’t know what the heck this is supposed to be!” Picasso didn't help by leaving the piece unnamed.
Nonetheless, it is a beloved landmark for many locals (including me) and visitors, and I’d venture that there are few if any farmers markets anywhere that share space with such a globally significant art installation.
Click the first button to learn more about Daley Center, and the second to access Local Food Forum's Chicago Region Farmers Market Tracker.
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