The Sunday before the Fourth, the farmers market ran on a stretch of Milwaukee Avenue that cars can no longer drive down. The Illinois Centennial Monument was visible from the produce stalls without a lane of traffic between them. A block west, the cul-de-sac near Lula Cafe made you pause and figure out where the crosswalk used to be. If you have lived here more than a couple of years, that walk felt like a rewrite.
This is the first summer where the $27 million Kedzie/Milwaukee/Logan redesign is finished, the plaza is programmed, the market has a permanent outdoor home inside the redesign, and the Arts Fest is back on the calendar after taking 2025 off. Read together, those four facts change how the neighborhood works on an ordinary Saturday.
The map is different now. Start there.
Kedzie Avenue was relocated northeast of the Blue Line station, opening a pedestrian plaza between the station and the businesses to the east. Kedzie Avenue has been relocated northeast of the Logan Square Blue Line CTA Station, creating a pedestrian plaza between the station and neighboring businesses to the east, with off-street bike paths, curb bump outs, pedestrian refuge islands and new signaled crossings. The circle carries two-way traffic now instead of one-way. The stretch of Milwaukee Avenue that used to cut straight through the monument is closed to cars, which is how the green space around the Centennial Monument finally reads as one park instead of two.
The plaza has a name, La Placita, and a design language. To celebrate the longtime Logan Square Latine community, the plaza's design was inspired by public spaces from several countries in Latin America, as seen in weaving pattern motifs in the paving stones and benches designed to eventually be spaces for mosaics by local artists. The courtyard more than doubled the available space for outdoor restaurant seating and created a space for artisans to pop up markets as an extension of the farmers market. That is the sentence that matters if you live here. The plaza is not decorative. It doubled the sidewalk seating capacity of the block, which is why El Cid and Same Day Cafe suddenly feel like plaza restaurants instead of Kedzie Avenue restaurants.
One thing to actually watch this summer. The plaza does not have a Special Service Area to fund planting maintenance. CDOT is responsible for the beds, which is why they chose to use limited, low-maintenance plantings. Translation: the greenery you see now is the greenery you get. If a neighborhood group eventually organizes to fund richer plantings, that will be the next visible upgrade. The temporary jersey barriers at the north end have been painted by local artists while a more permanent solution is designed.
The Blue Line canopy is the next construction phase. Per the city, construction will begin this summer on the rehabilitation of the Blue Line station canopy, the first renovation of the station since it opened in 1970. Expect fencing near the station entrance and revised bus staging while that happens.
The market moved. It's on Milwaukee now.
The Logan Square Farmers Market runs May 10 through October 25, 2026, Sundays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., listed at 2400 N. Kedzie Blvd. on the city's official schedule. In practice, the outdoor season is now sitting on the pedestrianized section of Milwaukee Avenue that the redesign created, which is why the chamber described it as opening at a "new forever home" for 2026.
A few things are actually different this year, not just cosmetically:
- The vendor roster reset. For the last two outdoor seasons, roster spots were essentially grandfathered because construction pinned the market at capacity. For 2026, the application cycle reopened as fully competitive, with new and returning vendors reviewed against the full applicant pool. If your favorite stand is gone, that is why. If a new one caught your eye, that is also why.
- The Arts Fest weekend detour. The market skipped its usual last Sunday in June to make room for the festival, and this year it popped up in Humboldt Park at the Erie Family Health Center parking lot at 2418 W. Division St. on June 28. That is the pattern to expect going forward: one Sunday off in late June, back the following week.
- Double Dollars still runs. LINK card holders get a match on fresh produce, a program the market has run since 2008 as the first Illinois market to do it.
If you have been coming to the market for years, the useful shift is that you can now walk from the produce stalls to Reno or across to the plaza benches without threading a crosswalk. That is what the redesign bought.
Arts Fest, back after a year off
The Logan Square Arts Fest returns June 26 to 28 on the monument and expanded plaza space at 3150 W. Logan Blvd. It is the 14th edition in 17 years, and 2025 was one of the skipped years while construction wrapped. The lineup includes 38 musical acts and performances, with Porches, a New York-based project of songwriter and producer Aaron Maine, set to take the main stage June 26. Bad Bad Hats, the Minneapolis indie pop duo of Kerry Alexander and Chris Hoge, will headline June 27, and "American Idol" alum Catie Turner is headlining June 28.
Local slots to watch on the schedule: Naydja Bruton's Rhythm Ninjas, a drummer-led Chicago ensemble popular in the city's experimental and jazz-adjacent scene; Angel Davanport, a queer Chicago-based singer and rapper from Cabrini-Green who blends rap and R&B; indie rock pair OK Cool; South Side rock band The Dead Bolts; Sophia Cruz, voted the Reader's Best Singer-Songwriter and Best R&B Artist of 2025; and Avondale's Billy Joel Jr.
Entry is free with a $10 suggested donation at the gates. The festival footprint is larger than the last full edition because it inherits the new plaza space, which is why organizers billed it as roughly double the previous vendor and art footprint. Interactive programming runs through Comfort Station, the neighborhood arts space that sits directly on the redesigned green.
If you have been reading Arts Fest coverage for a decade, the change worth noticing is the physical stage. The event no longer has to be built around a traffic circle. It is built around a plaza.
Milwaukee Avenue is where operators are betting
The clearest signal of what residents are quietly voting on with their feet is which operators opened, which reopened, and which moved in during the construction hangover.
The Radicle, from Joe Frillman of Daisies, opened January 7, 2026 at 2523 N. Milwaukee Ave., in the same storefront where Daisies first started. The concept pairs Midwest ingredients with Le Marche coastal Italian influence. The bar program is run by Nicole Yarovinsky, a two-time Tales of the Cocktail nominee and 2026 Jean Banchet nominee for Beverage Program of the Year.
Rasa, a compact Indian dining room at 2763 N. Milwaukee Ave., opened this spring from chef-owner Antony Jessil and three partners. Favorites so far include the chicken ammwala curry bowl, a mild Indian creamy curry with chicken, mango puree, coconut milk and spices; lamb bhuna punjabi curry cooked with tomato and herbs; and popular street food dishes like samosa chatt and banana fitter chatt. Lunch runs 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., dinner 4 to 10 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday.
Txa Txa Club finally has a permanent home in Logan Square after several years as a pop-up supper club. The all-day menu includes dishes like congee, papaya topped with sumac, tahini, and coconut, and panzanella with tomato nước chấm.
Culebra replaced Golden Teardrops as the speakeasy beneath Lonesome Rose, leaning into a cocktail menu full of drinks influenced by Puerto Rican and Caribbean flavors, like plantain-flavored rum shots and highballs made with Malta beer.
Jinsei Motto left its stint inside CH Distillery for its own Logan Square space, adding dishes like wagyu picanha from a new wood-fire oven alongside its dry-aged nigiri.
Two more things worth putting on the summer radar. La Lunita, a women-owned Mexican bar and restaurant at 2539 N. Milwaukee Ave. from the team behind La Luna on Racine, is open on the same block as The Radicle. And Trader Joe's confirmed it is taking over the long-vacant former CVS at 2053 N. Milwaukee Ave. The timeline is soft. A Trader Joe's spokesperson said the company is planning to open a store in Logan Square in "the next few years," but declined to confirm a location or timeline. The site plan includes more than 130 parking spaces, which would be one of the larger surface lots the chain operates in the city.
A Sunday, redrawn
If you want a concrete way to use all of this, here is what the redesigned neighborhood makes possible now that it did not make possible two summers ago:
- Walk to the market on the pedestrianized Milwaukee stretch. Buy produce without crossing a lane of car traffic.
- Cut across La Placita to Same Day Cafe or El Cid for coffee or a plate. The old walk required a curb cut that no longer exists in that geometry.
- Sit on a plaza bench facing the Centennial Monument. Watch a bike ride past on the new off-street path instead of the street.
- Head north up Kedzie to Lula Cafe, which now sits on a cul-de-sac instead of a service road. Traffic is different. Pay attention at the corner.
- On Arts Fest weekend, do the same loop in the evening. The stage sits where the traffic circle used to route cars around the monument.
A neighborhood does not get a rewrite like this often. The monument has been there since 1918. The Blue Line terminal has been in roughly its current form since 1970. The last decade of planning, the two construction seasons, and a skipped festival year all resolve into one summer where the useful thing to know is not what changed, but how to use it.
If you are thinking about your own next move, either into the neighborhood or up within it, the team at KD Homes works these blocks and can talk through what the redesigned square actually means for value on a specific address. Request a free home valuation when you are ready.