Portland Saturday Market

The Portland Saturday Market is an outdoor arts and crafts market in Portland, Oregon. It is the largest continuously operated outdoor market in the United States. It is held every Saturday and Sunday from the beginning of March through December 24, in Tom McCall Waterfront Park underneath and also south of the Burnside Bridge, as well as within an adjacent plaza just across Naito Parkway, extending west to the Skidmore Fountain. The market's hours of operations are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays, and 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m on Sundays, and admission is free. The market is accessible by foot, bicycle, Segway, and TriMet's MAX Light Rail line which stops near the market at the Skidmore Fountain stop. The market has over 400 members and generates an estimated $8 million in gross sales annually. It has become a central economic engine for the historic Old Town Chinatown neighborhood, and attracts an estimated 750,000 visitors to this area each year.

The market was founded in 1974 by craftspeople Sheri Teasdale and Andrea Scharf, who modeled it after the Saturday Market in Eugene, Oregon. It was founded as a mutual benefit corporation, under which all members would share in the cost and governance of the market, yet keep all profits they receive from selling their items. All items sold at the Saturday Market are required to be handmade by the person selling it, and a committee of members judge each new item against a minimum standard of quality.

The group did not have a location for the market, until Bill Naito offered them a parking lot known as the "Butterfly lot". A large butterfly mural hangs over the market today commemorating the past. For the first year that the market operated, there was no specific site plan. A clear site plan was eventually created, marking out 8 x 8 foot booth spaces, defining aisles and a pattern for customer traffic. In 1976, the market moved to a site under the Burnside Bridge between First Avenue and Front Avenue (now Naito Parkway), where it then remained for the next 33 years. It began operating on Sundays in 1977.

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