Our Story

 

The Rockford City Market is run by a local Rockford non-profit called the Rock River Development Partnership.

What started as a “farmers market on steroids” concept in a brainstorming session, morphed into the Outdoor Rockford City Market. For the past 10+ seasons the Outdoor Rockford City Market has operated in the heart of downtown Rockford, IL, bringing thousands of people downtown every Friday night during the summer. We intentionally prioritize local makers—growers, bakers, artists, and artisans—so that we can keep striving to connect the community to local small business and entrepreneurs. That has always been the primary goal of our non-profit.

 

Our first Outdoor Market was held in May of 2010.

It definitely could have been described as “small, but mighty”. There was no pavilion at the time, but our vendor booths were stretched out in their usual parking lot and extended down Water St. and Market St. We hoped to grow our Market bigger and better in time, but we didn’t expect the amount of growth to happen so quickly. By 2013 we were reaching 5,000 patrons almost every Friday night (70,000 over the whole summer!) and we were quickly learning that we needed to find additional restrooms, additional trash receptacles, and additional summer staff. It was clear our dream of creating a fun, family-friendly weekly environment for the community to support locals farmers and makers was well received.

In 2015 we also partnered with a local Saturday morning famers market just north of the Pavilion at Auburn & Main St.

At the time, the North End Commons Market had been meeting Saturday mornings in the parking lot behind the Norwegian. We partnered with the participating farmers and vendors, moved the Market across the street to a more visible parking lot, and welcomed them to the Market family under the new name of The North End City Market.

The same group of farmers still meet every Saturday morning May-October.

In 2015 we began construction on the Pavilion.

With five successful Outdoor Rockford City Markets under our belt, we were eager to continue growing. We knew if we wanted to continue truly being a ‘rain or shine’ event, we’d need shelter. This led to a partnership with the City of Rockford and a brand new pavilion in the center of downtown. Because of the pavilion, our Markets now offer shade and shelter from any unforeseen rain.

Construction was wrapped up by the summer of 2015, just in time for our 6th Outdoor Rockford City Market season! We had sixty-five vendors participating and it was our biggest season yet!

In the summer of 2019, we opened our Indoor Market building!

Our goal for this building was to be able to continue our work of hosting community-centered events in downtown Rockford year round! We didn’t want to solely be working in the community May-September, so we restored this gorgeous 1920’s piece of Rockford history from the ground up, conveniently just steps away from our Outdoor Market Pavilion! We wanted ample space for indoor events and winter markets, we wanted a breathtaking historic event space to host weddings and private events, we wanted a 24/7 state of the art commercial kitchen to help local food entrepreneur begin their businesses, and we wanted to be able to lease out parts of our building to permanent restaurants and bakeries.

If you’ve been inside the Rockford City Market building…

…then you know that enduring our long season of construction, restoration, and rebuilding was well worth it. In the summer of 2019 we were overjoyed to open up our doors to the public, officially making our long-term dream of a year-round public space in downtown Rockford a reality.

Restoring the building was not an easy task…

A project that was supposed to take nine months ended up taking nineteen months.

What are we doing today?

We’re working hard to make every season of the Outdoor Rockford City Market and the Outdoor North End City Market better than the last. We want to give our vendors as many opportunities as possible to engage with the community, and in-turn we want to the community to support our local businesses and aid in helping downtown Rockford thrive.

During the winter and spring we host a multitude of fun community-driven events inside the Rockford City Market building! We host Winter Markets, Vintage Markets, and Themed Pop Up Markets to still connect the community to local businesses, and we also host yoga classes, baking classes, trivia nights, paint & wine nights, swing dancing classes, floral arrangement classes, board painting workshops, and more to connect the community to each other in a fun and dynamic way.

Our Wedding & Events team is always working hard to host beautiful weddings and private events through out the year in our venue spaces.

So what is the Rockford City Market…?

The Rockford City Market is an umbrella that encompasses the Outdoor Rockford City Market, the North End City Market, Rockford City Market Weddings & Events, and a collection of other community-centered events and markets held inside our Rockford City Market Building or outside underneath the Rockford City Market Pavilion.

We’re a local non-profit; a small team of three women, who work year-round to create events and markets with the hopes of connecting, inspiring, and growing.