Chali Pittman
A green sign with a QR code in the parking lot of the Madison Public Market, with the market in the background.
The phone app ParkMobile will be used to charge for parking in the lot behind the Madison Public Market starting in August.
There are a number of options for traveling to the Madison Public Market during its “grand opening season,” which starts July 23 [now postponed, see editor's note] and runs through Labor Day. You can walk, bike or take the bus. But if you drive and park in one of the market lot’s stalls, you'll need to pay, as of August.
Signs for ParkMobile, a digital-only, nationwide app that also operates parking for UW-Madison, have been posted in the parking lot. Visitors scan a QR code to pay through the app. All parking must be paid electronically.
Madison Public Market operations director Steve Sisson tells Isthmus in an email that parking will cost $2 per hour, adding that six 20-minute quick pickup spots located closest to the Johnson Street entrance will not require payment.
Sisson says that the decision to charge for parking was made by the Madison Public Market Foundation “as we got deeper into planning operations for the market” in early 2026. The funds collected will go to the foundation, and “will support the maintenance of the parking lot and building services so we do not have to have special assessments for merchants.” The Madison Public Market Foundation is a nonprofit and the foundation is involved with ongoing fundraising to support its merchants, intended to be first-time business owners with barriers to conventional entry into business ownership.
Market promotional materials have touted the 106 parking spaces now available at the site, which, as the former Fleet Services building, had no parking lot.
ParkMobile will receive “a small percentage of each payment,” says Sisson; the foundation receives the rest. ParkMobile was chosen because “many parking lots in Madison use it, and its implementation provides consistency across the city, with the hope that the user experience will be familiar to most.”
The city of Madison owns the property where the market is located, including the building, and leases it to the Madison Public Market Foundation under an agreement finalized in November 2025. Under the agreement, the city is responsible for managing the “parking lot site review process and related approvals,” while the foundation is responsible for managing the “operation aspects of parking on-site.”
An earlier draft of the agreement, from June 2023, went into more detail — stating that “if paid parking were desired, this would require another management document to be approved by the City of Madison.” That language is absent from the final agreement.
“There was further discussion on this point as the city was finalizing the lease with the foundation,” city economic development director Matt Mikolajewski says in a statement to Isthmus, adding that the responsibility to manage parking is left up to the foundation.
“The foundation let us know that they were planning to charge for parking, the city was OK with this approach, and the city made the decision to forgo further oversight regarding parking on the property. As such, the final version of the lease simply notes that the foundation ‘will manage operation aspects of parking on-site,’” Mikolajewski adds.
The market, at 202 N. First St., was slated to open for business on July 23 but that has been postponed due to the July 22 police shooting on Williamson Street.
Editor's note: this story has been updated to reflect that the grand opening on July 23 has been postponed.
