SoWa Open Market will be open all weekend long this year
You’ll have double the chances to check out the SoWa Open Market this year.
Organizers announced this week that the seasonal marketplace featuring more than 150 small businesses will be open on both Saturdays and Sundays during the 2017 season, starting with its opening weekend beginning Saturday, April 29 and concluding on Sunday, October 29.
SoWa attracts thousands of visitors every year with an arts market, farmers market, food truck bazaar, and beer garden all packed into a small block on Harrison Avenue in the South End.
Another change for SoWa this year is a charitable one: Proceeds from sales of exclusive SoWa merchandise and donations collected from boxes set up around the market will go toward a different local nonprofit organization each month.
“Arts, culture and creativity are part of the DNA of our great city, said Julie Burros, chief of arts and culture for the City of Boston, in a press release. “The SoWa Arts & Design District and Open Market are a vital element of our cultural infrastructure.”
Also this week, The Boston Globe reported that the South End Open Market, a competing open-air market, would be ending after only one year. South End Open Market’s owner, Chris Masci, ran SoWa Open Market at Harrison Avenue for 13 years before a rancorous business dispute erupted between him and the property owner, Mario Nicosia. Masci was forced out and, in 2016, opened the South End Open Market down the street, while Niscosia started his own competing market at the original location.
“We had built up a customer base over 13 years, and we only had six months to get the message about the new location out there and retrain people,” Masci told the Globe. “They just didn’t get it.”
