Market manager Stefanie Stauffer told the Ann Arbor Observer: "A large gap between the sidewalk and the building."
Stauffer first noticed the gap outside the Farmers Market office in the spring of 2023, about a year before anyone in Kerrytown was talking about redesigning anything. A forensic inspection followed. The foundation under the small office and bathroom building at 315 Detroit Street, added sometime in the 1980s, had eroded to the point where the city called it structurally unsound. The office closed in the spring of 2024. Demolition wrapped by the following summer. What's left is a fenced-off lot at the edge of the pavilion, and it's been sitting there through an entire growing season and most of another.
If you shop the market on Saturdays, you've probably already worked out a new path around it. What you may not know is that the empty space isn't a renovation in progress. It's a structural failure the city is still figuring out how to answer, and the answer is going to take longer than most of the things that usually get built in Kerrytown.
The newest part of the market turned out to be the least stable
There's a detail in this story that's easy to miss: the building that failed wasn't one of the market's original sheds. Those date back more than a century and have barely changed in that time. The office and bathroom addition that got condemned was comparatively new, tacked onto the site decades after the market itself had already become an Ann Arbor institution.
That distinction matters if you're wondering whether the market as you know it is at risk. It isn't. The producer-only stalls between Detroit Street and North Fourth Avenue, where roughly 125 Michigan vendors sell everything from Great Lakes fish to third-generation family produce, aren't part of what came down. What's gone is the support structure behind the scenes, and what replaces it is now the subject of a public planning process rather than a straightforward rebuild.
The city has been direct about the fact that this wasn't the plan. Remy Long, deputy manager of Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation, told The Michigan Daily earlier this year that the aging infrastructure of the Farmers Market, underscored by the unexpected condemnation of the office building, has prompted the city to open a public visioning process. In other words: this started as an emergency repair and turned into an opportunity nobody asked for.
Two projects, two very different speeds
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only look at the fenced lot: not everything at the market is waiting on a master plan. Some of the work is already happening, quietly, above your head.
Stauffer told The Michigan Daily that the city's parks department is going to be revamping some of the support beams in the market's roof, work she said was already underway as of earlier this year. That's a maintenance project, not a redesign, and it doesn't need a community input process to move forward. If you've noticed bracing overhead in one of the sheds this season, that's likely what you're looking at.
The office building site is a different animal entirely. According to the city's own market page, 2026 is the year Ann Arbor plans to embark on a market study that looks holistically at the site and makes decisions meant to support what it calls the market's continued vibrancy at 107 years old. No design team has been publicly announced. No renderings exist yet. The process depends on the kind of community engagement that takes months, not weeks, to run properly.
Vendors have opinions about what that process should produce, and they're specific. One vendor told the Ann Arbor Observer he'd like to see level ground, since customers trip over the steps between stalls and vendors stepping up onto the curb from their trucks have fallen and been hurt.
"It would be nice to have level ground."
Carol Brooks of Brookside Blueberry Farm told the same publication she'd welcome an indoor space, but worried about the practical side of it. Karlene Goetz of Goetz Greenhouse said that if the city is going to spend real money on this, it should meaningfully improve at least part of the market rather than spreading a small budget thin across all of it.
None of those requests are small. Leveling ground under a working market means rethinking drainage, stall placement, and probably the roofline itself. That's likely why the timeline stretches into a full year of study rather than a construction season.
What this actually means for your trip to the market this fall
Ann Arbor's 2026 construction season is, by the city's own description, one of the busiest in recent memory downtown, with utility upgrades, transportation projects, and private development all landing between April and November. Two of those private projects are named specifically in the city's construction advisory as likely to affect the market itself: development at 313 Braun Court and at 303 Detroit Street, both close enough to Kerrytown that the city flagged them as probable sources of temporary access impacts.
Here's a quick way to keep the moving pieces straight if you're planning a market run between now and Thanksgiving.
| What | Status this fall | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Old office building site | Demolished; city market study planned for 2026, no design chosen yet | Fenced lot stays as is near the Detroit Street side; the working stalls are unaffected |
| Roof support beams | Renovation already underway per market staff | You may see bracing overhead in some sheds; it's maintenance, not a sign of bigger changes yet |
| 313 Braun Court and 303 Detroit Street development | Active private construction the city has flagged as likely to affect market access | Foot traffic patterns near Fourth Avenue may shift through November |
None of this closes the market. It just means the version of "walk in from wherever you usually park" that worked in past years might need a small adjustment through the fall.
The one thing on this list that isn't waiting on anyone
If all of that sounds like a market in flux, there's a piece of it running exactly on schedule. The Sunday Artisan Market, which rents the same pavilion for a separate weekly show of handmade goods, is marking its 35th year in 2026. It's open every Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. through December 20, the same format it's used for over three decades, regardless of what's happening a few yards away at the old office site.
The main market's own fall calendar is holding steady too. Cooking demonstrations continue on the second Wednesday of the month through October. If you want one more Wednesday evening with food trucks before the market's rhythm shifts into winter, the season's final Food Truck Rally lands October 21, the third Wednesday of the month, same as it has all summer.
That contrast is worth sitting with. A market that's been open since 1919, the second-oldest continuously operating public market in Michigan, doesn't rebuild its physical layout very often. The last time anyone touched the shed structure in a serious way was decades ago. Whatever comes out of this year's study will likely stand for a very long time, which is probably the real reason nobody's rushing it. A quick fix to an emergency is easy. Getting the next ninety years right is a different kind of project, and it's one the city seems to be taking seriously enough to slow down for.
If you're the kind of person who tracks details like this about the neighborhood you live in, that instinct is worth something when it's time to think about a home here too. Jay Gingell pays attention to the small, specific things that shape daily life in Ann Arbor, Plymouth, Northville, Canton, Livonia, and Novi, not just the listings. If a conversation about this market, or any Ann Arbor block, ever turns into a conversation about what your home is worth in it, reach out any time.
