Every Saturday morning for sixteen years, the ritual has looked the same. You park under the two-level garage at First Street and Brown Avenue, walk past a wall of tents smelling like fresh-baked bread and roasted green chile, and spend an hour deciding between a box of McClendon Select tomatoes and a cold brew from the vendor everyone already has on speed dial. That garage has a nickname among city staff and longtime Old Town residents: the Corral. This October, the Corral won't be there for you.
The Old Town Scottsdale Farmers Market is relocating to the City Hall surface lot at 75th Street and Bennie Gonzales Way when its 2026-27 season opens, the first time in the market's history that it has left the Brown Avenue site. The city council voted 5-2 in April to move forward with a construction contract on a parking garage expansion that makes the current lot unavailable. What gets lost in the coverage of that vote is the part that actually matters if you shop there every week: the market has reportedly been turning away new vendor applications for a while now because Brown Avenue simply ran out of room. The garage that's evicting the market may be handing it the one thing it couldn't get on its own.
The Constraint Nobody Was Talking About
A parking structure has hard edges. Columns, low ceilings, a fixed footprint that doesn't grow no matter how many bakers and ranchers want a spot. The Old Town market has run close to 107 vendors most Saturdays, drawing an estimated 3,500 shoppers a week by one local market guide's count, which would make it the largest farmers market in the Phoenix metro. That size came with a ceiling. According to that same guide, the market had already maxed out its available space at Brown Avenue and was declining new vendor applications simply because there was nowhere to put them.
An open-air surface lot doesn't have that problem in the same way. It doesn't have the same physical limits a garage imposes, and city officials involved in the relocation have suggested the new site could ultimately support more vendors than the current one ever could. Nobody has published a hard cap for the City Hall lot yet, so treat that as a possibility rather than a promise. But the mechanism is real: a market that has been quietly capacity-constrained since well before this construction fight started is being forced into a location that removes the ceiling, not because anyone planned it that way, but because the city needed the old lot for cars.
Why the Corral Had to Go
The garage itself has been years in the making. Scottsdale voters approved funding for additional Old Town parking facilities back in the 2019 bond election, and the city spent 2024 and 2025 running public meetings and design reviews before the council approved a Design Build Manager, Chasse Building Team, to take the project forward. The expansion adds three stories above ground to the existing structure, plus the one subterranean level already there, bringing the total to 412 parking spaces once finished, 186 of them new.
The April vote that set construction in motion wasn't quiet. Council members approved a $3.8 million contract to begin demolition and site work, part of an overall project budget the city has pegged at $20.9 million. Two members voted no. Mayor Lisa Borowsky was one of them, arguing the chosen site
couldn't be in a worse area
for a project she says undercuts her push to revitalize Old Town's character. A cafe owner and council candidate, Crystal Carroll, raised a different objection at a public meeting, pointing out that the roughly $90,000 cost per parking space runs close to three times the national average for structured parking. Critics have taken to calling the whole fight Parkingate. Supporters, including Vice Mayor Adam Kwasman, argue Old Town's chronic parking shortage will only get worse if the city waits.
None of that changes what happens to the market. City Manager Greg Caton framed the relocation plainly in the announcement, calling it
one of Scottsdale's most loved traditions
and describing the City Hall lot as a way to keep it close to the heart of Old Town while construction proceeds elsewhere.
What Actually Changes, and What Doesn't
Strip away the politics and the move breaks down into a short list of real changes against a longer list of things that hold steady.
What stays the same:
- Saturday mornings remain Saturday mornings. The market isn't shifting days.
- The seasonal rhythm holds: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. from October through April, shorter hours in May and a compressed 7 to 10 a.m. slot in June before the market goes dark for the summer.
- Dog-friendly policies, cash and card vendors, and SNAP, WIC and AZFMNP acceptance all carry over.
- The roster of growers and food producers who've built loyal followings at Brown Avenue, from produce staples to the artisan bread tables, are expected to make the move with the market rather than get left behind.
What changes:
- The address moves from 1st Street and Brown Avenue to 75th Street and Bennie Gonzales Way, a different quadrant of Old Town.
- The physical format shifts from a covered parking structure to an open-air surface lot, which means different shade patterns, different foot traffic flow, and no more columns breaking up the vendor rows.
- The construction timeline means Brown Avenue's last season ran through June 2026, with work on the garage beginning that July and the market going straight into its usual summer closure before reopening at the new site in October, rather than returning to a familiar spot.
Mapping the New Address Against the Old Rhythm
| Brown Avenue (through June 2026) | City Hall Lot (starting October 2026) | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 1st Street & Brown Avenue | 75th Street & Bennie Gonzales Way |
| Site type | Two-level parking structure | Open-air surface lot |
| Years in operation | 16 seasons | New for the 2026-27 season |
| Vendor cap | Near capacity, applications turned away | Not yet publicized, expected to allow growth |
| Saturday hours | Oct-Apr 8am-1pm, May 8am-12pm, June 7-10am | Same seasonal structure carries over |
The garage project's own completion date gives Old Town a very Scottsdale kind of deadline. The city's capital improvement page has construction wrapping enough for new stalls to open by spring 2027, timed to land before spring training season brings its usual crush of visitors downtown. Work on interior elements of the garage continues through the summer after that, but the parking itself should be back online well before next year's market season winds down.
What This Means for Your Saturday This October
If you've shopped Brown Avenue for years, the honest answer is that the first few Saturdays at the new site will feel unfamiliar. Different parking, a different walk from your car to the first tent, a layout nobody has tested yet. That adjustment is real and worth planning around if you're used to arriving at a specific time to beat the crowd to a favorite vendor.
But the more interesting story here isn't disruption. It's that a market that had quietly outgrown its own home, one that had started saying no to bakers and growers who wanted in, is being pushed into a space with room to say yes again. Whether that plays out as more vendors, shorter lines, or simply a market that finally stops turning people away depends on decisions the city and market organizers haven't made public yet. Worth watching this fall, either way.
For residents thinking about what else is shifting in Old Town's civic footprint this year, from parking to public art to the broader Brown Avenue corridor, Templeton Walker keeps a close eye on the changes that shape daily life here, not just the ones that show up on a listing sheet. Reach out anytime you want a read on what's actually happening in the neighborhood.
