Market in the Park is first sign of activation near Grant Park Gateway

A market featuring food, crafts and free activities is heading to an underutilized part of Grant Park this weekend.

Hosted by the Grant Park Conservancy, the first Market in the Park debuts on Sunday at the 1.5-acre Boulevard Green space on the southeast side of the park next to the Grant Park Gateway. It is the first event in a series of spring markets planned for one Sunday each month through June.

Sunday’s market is timed with Earth Day weekend and will bring vendors and activities that highlight sustainability.

This market is the first bit of recurring programming to debut near the Grant Park Gateway since the parking deck was completed in 2021, and the Conservancy hopes it will be the start of more activations coming to the park’s southeast side as city officials work to fill the vacant restaurant space on top of the Grant Park Gateway parking garage.

The Grant Park Summer Shade Festival is a much larger example of what the new Market in the Park will look like on the Boulevard Green in Grant Park. (Courtesy of the Grant Park Conservancy)

What to expect at the first Market in the Park

After years of handling structural improvements and taking on development projects at Grant Park, Michelle Blackmon, executive director of the conservancy, said the team felt it was ready to introduce new community events to the park regularly.

“We’re reaching sort of a stage in our evolution where, now that we’ve done all these amazing improvements in the park, we want to start activating them, and we want to start bringing programming to the community,” she said.

The idea for Market in the Park developed out of a survey the conservancy distributed to supporters and neighborhood residents about a year ago to learn what people wanted to see at the park, and some of the most popular requests were markets and minifestivals.

The conservancy decided to start with the spring market series. Blackmon said the group hopes to continue the series in the fall, depending on community feedback.

“It’s just supposed to be a really fun and engaging community space where you can feel really uplifted and positive,” said Skyler Edwards, program manager at the Grant Park Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that works on the restoration, maintenance and beautification of the park.

This weekend’s Earth Day theme will focus on sustainability. Vendors will offer items like vintage clothes and jewelry, sustainable home goods, planters, kitchen goods, vegetables, herbs and mushrooms. There also will be a truck from Georgia Proud Provisions with strawberries, blueberries, pecans and peaches.

Featured food vendors include Sweet Auburn Barbecue with its new brunch menu, and Hermanita, a sister pop-up concept to Tio Lucho’s.

The market will begin at 10 a.m. with a free yoga class, followed by music throughout the day. The Grant Park Parents Network and the Little Gym of Grant Park will lead free activities for kids.

“This is a perfect opportunity to combine this programming desire of the community with our desire to improve this (Boulevard Green) space,” Blackmon said.

The Grant Park Conservancy added a pedestrian path through the Boulevard Green to make the space more functional for monthly markets. (Courtesy of the Grant Park Conservancy)

The Boulevard Green was originally an offshoot of a much larger parking lot that was absorbed by the Grant Park Gateway parking garage, and it was never included in that larger plan. So once the Gateway was completed, the 1.5-acre space was left behind.

The City of Atlanta agreed to sod over the asphalt so it wouldn’t remain a surface lot, and the Grant Park Conservancy used funds from a Park Pride visioning grant to fix up the Boulevard Green space.

It’s an ideal spot for this market, she said, with plenty of parking nearby, and it’s only a few blocks away from the recently opened Atlanta Beltline Southeast Trail.

Improvements made to the space in anticipation of the market include installing a concrete pathway for pedestrians, bikers and vendors, and ensuring the trees in the area were structurally pruned.

Blackmon said they’re particularly enthused about bringing activities to the east side of the park near Boulevard and the Grant Park Gateway, where the restaurant space on top has remained empty since the parking deck was completed in 2021.

“I think everybody is excited to see something happening over there,” Blackmon said. “And yes, (we’re) hoping that that is just one more point as to why somebody should be excited about opening something in that space.”

A rendering of the Grant Park Gateway before it was completed. The far right side will eventually feature a restaurant. (Courtesy)

The future of the Grant Park Gateway

The City of Atlanta has been working to fill the vacant restaurant space on top of the Grant Park Gateway since it opened its first request for proposals in 2023. City Council member Jason Winston of District 1, which includes Grant Park, is hopeful a vendor will be found this year.

The Grant Park Gateway was announced in 2017 as an initiative to bring more parking to the Grant Park neighborhood, specifically for those visiting Zoo Atlanta, which neighbors the park. At first, there wasn’t much of a vision for the parking deck, but Blackmon said the conservancy’s board chair at the time urged city officials to build “something beautiful,” she said.

Then-Mayor Kasim Reed was inspired by a park he had seen in Dallas that was built over an interstate, so he flew Blackmon and former City Council member Carla Smith to Texas to see his vision of a parking deck that would add more green space to the area and would even include a restaurant.

There was some local pushback against the project, particularly since it required cutting down more than 130 healthy trees.

While the Grant Park Conservancy always supported the Grant Park Gateway, “It was great to see activation around caring for ecology in the trees,” Blackmon said. “And I definitely feel like it helped to impact the design to keep the focus where we all wanted it to be.”

The project moved forward and construction was completed in 2021, but finding a vendor to fill the restaurant space at the top has proved difficult.

In 2024, local grocery store Savi Provisions was selected by the City of Atlanta to open in the space. But after about a year with little construction progress, Savi pulled out in May 2025.

The city announced it would consider making a deal with Terminus Commercial Real Estate Partners to lease the space, but Winston said city officials decided to stick with the bid process to allow bidders in the first round an “equal opportunity to be able to get the space.”

In January, the Grant Park Neighborhood Association and the City of Atlanta asked for input on what people wanted to see in the space.

In the next three to four weeks, Winston said the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Procurement plan to again open a request for proposals. The hope is to have a tenant selected by the fall who will build out the space. Winston said the city has been considering some incentives to help with the build-out.