Friday night downtown, the vendors at Ward Avenue are selling produce, meat, and baked goods to people who came with a shopping list. Two mornings later, the same few blocks downtown look nothing like that. Cameron Park fills with a dance class, a family zone, and a lineup of food and craft vendors that has nothing to do with what's for dinner. Same city. Same summer. Two entirely different reasons to leave the house.
That split did not happen by accident. It is the visible result of a park that needed fixing and an organization that decided the fix should look like a party.
The Friday market earned its new parking lot the hard way
The La Crosse Farmers Market has spent the last several years looking for a home. It has moved from Cameron Park to Burns Park to a lot at City Hall, a string of relocations driven by safety concerns and declining attendance at its previous downtown sites. As of May 2026, it settled into what organizers hope is a permanent location at the Hmoob Cultural and Community Center at 1815 Ward Avenue, running every Friday from 3:30 to 7 p.m. through October.
The move solved a problem the market had never been able to fix downtown. Sarah Burns, treasurer of the La Crosse Farmers Market Association, put it plainly: the Hmoob center offers a large parking lot, something the market has never had at any of its previous downtown locations. That is not a small detail for a producer-driven market where shoppers are hauling home boxes of produce and cases of jars.
The Friday market has also kept the one distinction that matters most to a chunk of its regular shoppers. It remains the only market in La Crosse County that accepts EBT, and it runs a double dollar program that matches EBT spending on fresh produce. If you are doing your actual grocery shopping at a farmers market rather than just browsing, Friday at the Hmoob center is still the one built for that.
Sunday was built to solve a different problem
The Sunday Market did not exist a year ago. Downtown Mainstreet's new director, Chad Honeycutt, pitched it to the city's neighborhood revitalization commission in the spring, and the pitch was not really about groceries. Honeycutt described Sunday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., as his "revitalization point for this downtown," the starting point for bringing different kinds of downtown activity back into the same public space.
That space is Cameron Park, and the choice was deliberate. Kathleen Graham, Downtown Mainstreet's community engagement director, said the goal was to "reactivate and reclaim Cameron Park" so families and children in the community could use it and enjoy it again. Organizers worked with the La Crosse Police Department and the Parks and Recreation Department on walkthroughs and cleanup ahead of the launch, treating the market less like a farmers market and more like a weekly civic program with vendors attached.
The Sunday Market debuted on May 31, 2026, and ran through the last Sunday in October. The grand opening included a free groove-fit dance class, and Graham told WIZM afterward that turnout was more than organizers expected, with vendors already booking dates for the rest of the season.
Friday and Sunday, side by side
| Friday Farmers Market | Sunday Market | |
|---|---|---|
| Location | Hmoob Cultural and Community Center, 1815 Ward Ave | Cameron Park |
| Hours | 3:30 – 7 p.m. | 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. |
| Season | May – October | May 31 – October 25, 2026 |
| Run by | La Crosse Farmers Market Association | Downtown Mainstreet |
| What you'll find | Produce, meats, baked goods, EBT and double dollar accepted | Food and drink vendors, live music, wellness classes, family zone |
| Best for | Filling the fridge | Filling a Sunday morning |
What you'll actually find depends on which day you show up
Friday still runs like a market in the traditional sense. It is produce forward, it is where growers sell what they picked that week, and the EBT and double dollar program means it functions as a genuine grocery stop for a meaningful share of shoppers.
Sunday is closer to a downtown block party with a market bolted on. Organizers describe zones rather than rows of stalls: a wellness and exercise area with classes like tai chi, a music zone with live performers and a piano, a family area, and food and drink vendors layered on top. It is the kind of morning you build a whole Sunday around rather than a stop you make on the way to somewhere else.
The storefronts are catching up to the sidewalk traffic
The market split is not the only thing that changed downtown this year. A run of new restaurants has filled in old, well-known buildings rather than new construction, which tells you something about how much foot traffic downtown La Crosse is generating on both market days.
Flatiron Café & Bar opened this spring at 321 State Street in the former Schuby's space, building its menu around European comfort food and ingredients sourced from regional producers. A few blocks away, Hollandberry Pannekoeken took over a former Wells Fargo drive-through at 200 Sixth Street, serving the Dutch souffle pancake it's named for alongside a full breakfast and lunch menu, seven days a week.
OPUS Bakehouse, already established in Onalaska, opened a second location in La Crosse in early June and reportedly sold out of most of its sourdough pastries within the first hour of its grand opening. Priya's Spice Bazaar, an Indian grocery and restaurant that started during the pandemic, moved into a refurbished historic railroad building in La Crosse in January, expanding out of the business incubator space it had outgrown. And the former LAX Grille space is set to become JAC's Signature Steakhouse, an expansion from Jennifer and Chris Popp's existing restaurant in Tomah.
None of these are new buildings. They are downtown's existing bones filling back up with new concepts, which is a different kind of growth than a new development would signal. It tracks with a Sunday morning crowd and a Friday evening crowd that are both large enough to support a fuller restaurant lineup around them.
The season builds toward one weekend that outgrows both markets
Both markets run through October, but the calendar has a fixed point everyone downtown is building toward: Oktoberfest USA, September 24 through 27, 2026. It is the 65th year of what's billed as the longest-running Oktoberfest in the Midwest, with the Torchlight Parade on Thursday and the Maple Leaf Parade on Saturday anchoring four days of free, family-friendly programming. Sunday of that weekend is free admission from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., which means the same Cameron Park crowd that spent the summer showing up for group fitness and live music gets one more Sunday downtown before the market season wraps for the year.
A note from Jillian
What strikes me about this summer is how much of it came from a decision, not a coincidence. Someone looked at a park with a reputation problem and decided the fix was to fill it with people again. Someone else looked at a produce market that kept losing its parking and found it a permanent home instead. That's the kind of downtown momentum that tends to show up later in home values and buyer interest, but for now it's just a better reason to be out on a Friday or a Sunday. I love watching this city figure out its own rhythm, and I'd love to help you find your place in it.
If you're curious what a home near this downtown momentum is worth, or you're weighing a move to be closer to it, Jillian Hugo & Associates would be glad to talk it through. Contact Jillian for a complimentary home consultation.
