After a summer of construction, Pioneer Park in downtown Salt Lake City is set to reopen next week, when a variety of upgrades — including a new pavilion, a mist fountain and a dog park — will be made available to the public.

But one big feature will be missing.

The permanent building that the Downtown Alliance and the city planned to build in the urban park as a year-round home for the Downtown Farmers Market and Winter Market won’t be happening, at least for the foreseeable future.

On Tuesday, the Downtown Alliance announced in a newsletter to market vendors and patrons that “there wasn’t a construction and ownership structure that met the needs of both the City and the Alliance,” so the effort has “come to a close.”

“I’m a little disappointed,” said Ana Valdemoros, owner of Argentina’s Best Empanadas (a fixture at the Downtown Farmers Market), and a former Salt Lake City Council member.

She called the decision not to go forward with the building a “missed opportunity” for the Pioneer Park neighborhood, District 4 — which she represented on the City Council — and Utah’s capital city.

In spring 2025, the Salt Lake Chamber-supported alliance, which represents downtown merchants, had signed a “memorandum of understanding” with the city to study the feasibility of a public building, as well as a public-private partnership that would manage safety, programming and maintenance in the park, once tarnished by vagrancy and crime.

Dee Brewer, executive director of the Downtown Alliance, said he’d been inspired by permanent year-round markets and multiuse spaces he’d seen in Oregon, Texas and Washington D.C.

With a permanent structure in Pioneer Park, “we could be in that park 365 days a year,” Brewer said, “putting out activations, programming, lawn chairs, cornhole, chess, reading rooms, creating all manner of activation that would enhance the visitation and make [the park] more vibrant, more safe, and more interesting to residents and to visitors.”

Mayor Erin Mendenhall appointed a working group of city departments, stakeholders and the Downtown Alliance to examine land use, utility access, public lands considerations and historic landmark reports to narrow down where such a building could go inside the park, according to a staff report to the Downtown Alliance Advisory Board.

But the city officials and the alliance met “complexity on complexity” in trying to come up with a land-use plan for the public park and an ownership structure involving the city, said Carly Gillespie, director of the Downtown Farmers Market.

And, she added, the Downtown Alliance would’ve had to turn to private funding to raise money for the project, which came with an ever-rising price tag around $25 million.

Gillespie said the price had probably gone up 10 cents since she started talking with a Salt Lake Tribune reporter on Tuesday.

“We couldn’t justify the benefits of the building based on the cost of the building,” Brewer said.

But even if all that fundraising had happened, the Downtown Alliance wouldn’t have owned the building, the city would have, which was unfeasible for the group, Brewer and Gillespie said.

Blake Thomas, senior advisor on real estate and capital projects in the Mayor’s Office, said a big impact on the decision about the building was the fact that the Downtown Alliance has found a new home for the Winter Market in the former Leonardo building.

Gillespie said housing the Winter Market in the former Leonardo is “temporary with hopes of being long term.”

She said the 2025 Winter Market was “incredibly successful,” with many vendors reporting increased traffic and 25% higher sales than when the market was at The Gateway shopping center.

And Brewer added that the former Leonardo was made available “at a fraction of the cost” of investing in a public market building in Pioneer Park. This year, Brewer said the annual facilities costs for producing 21 Winter Markets will be about $6,000.

“The visibility is incredible,” Gillespie said. “The location works really well for us. Operationally, it’s significantly easier.”

“If anything, the conversation with the city around Pioneer Park and the permanency for a Winter Market opened up this opportunity and has helped us develop better conversations around the future of the [Downtown] Farmers Market and the Winter Market,” she continued.

Now that the Downtown Alliance is in talks with the city about permanently hosting the Winter Market in the former Leonardo building, they’re discussing “what that could look like, and what a long-term lease there might be,” Gillespie said, “and that’s really where we’re focusing our energy.”

The Winter Market kicks off on Nov. 14 in the former museum at 200 East and 500 South in Library Square.

Gillespie said there will be more room to shop and operate at the market this year, as two airplanes suspended from the ceiling have been taken down as well as the staircases attached to them.

She said the Downtown Farmers Market will return to a reimagined Pioneer Park next June, with a new layout and the same number of vendors, and will “hopefully be a more fun place to be.”

The $18.4 million worth of improvements at Pioneer Park include an all-abilities accessible playground, promenade, pickleball courts, basketball court, expanded tree canopy and a new art installation called “Common Roots,” created by James Shen and Jennifer Tran.

Thomas said that while the plan was to do the improvements in two phases, the contractor was able to finish the entire project in one phase.

The grand opening on Nov. 13 will be from noon to 2 p.m. at Pioneer Park, at 350 S. 300 West. There will be speeches from 12:15 to 12:45 p.m., followed by live music and lunch from a food truck (free meal vouchers will be given to the first 100 people).

Valdemoros, who said she pushed for millions of dollars of investment in Pioneer Park when she was on the City Council, said she isn’t giving up on the dream of having a permanent market in Salt Lake City.

“I hope this isn’t the end of the vision for a permanent public market, perhaps not at Pioneer Park, but I hope it doesn’t end,” she said.

“There are partners out there that, especially donors in the state, that would be happy to contribute in creative ways to make it happen,” she continued.