The city called it a hat trick. On June 6, Renton celebrated the grand opening of three connected spaces on the old gravel lot at South 3rd Street and Logan Avenue South: Legacy Square, a rebuilt Piazza Park, and what the invitations described as the "soon-to-be Renton Market." Brad Evans, a Seattle Sounders FC ambassador, welcomed the crowd. The Hazen Highlander Marching Band played on the new futsal court. Renton Civic Theatre performed numbers from Footloose while Sammy the Sounder worked the photo line.
A hat trick means three goals. Three and a half months later, downtown Renton has scored two.
How a Gravel Lot Became the HEART Block
The site has a longer history than one summer of ribbon cuttings suggests. The city bought the property in 2011 with no fixed plan beyond eventually turning it into a civic amenity. Mayor Dennis Law and the city council requested a formal downtown strategy in 2016, the resulting Renton Downtown Civic Core and Action Plan went through community workshops for two years, and the council adopted it in 2018. Construction on what the plan calls the HEART Block did not start until the summer of 2024. That is thirteen years between purchase and groundbreaking, which tells you something about how downtown redevelopment actually moves in a city this size: slowly, then all at once, then unevenly.
The "all at once" part landed this year, timed to the FIFA World Cup's Seattle-area matches in June. The "unevenly" part is what residents are living through right now.
What's Actually Open Right Now
Legacy Square, at 510 S. 3rd St., is doing exactly what it was built to do. The 900-square-foot stage, designed by Mithun with regionally sourced cross-laminated timber panels that cut embodied carbon by roughly 20 percent compared to a steel-and-concrete alternative, has hosted a full summer calendar. Free Friday movie nights ran through August, including Lilo & Stitch, Black Panther, and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, with concessions opening at 6 p.m. and the films starting at 7. The Summer Concert Series brought in acts like The Underhills and a K-pop dance party called Golden. Sunday mornings had Tai Chi through the Summer Sundays series, and the mini soccer pitch, contributed by the RAVE Foundation, hosted watch parties for World Cup matches like Mexico vs. South Africa and USA vs. Paraguay back in June.
Piazza Park, one block over, got its own overhaul from Graham Baba Architects and landscape architect Hewitt, including a new playground built with input from a neighboring daycare and designed specifically for ages 2 to 5, distinct from the futsal court next door aimed at kids 5 and up. The park's biggest recurring draw is the Renton Farmers Market, now in its 25th season and, with Legacy Square open, stretching across Logan Avenue for the first time. Tuesdays from 3 to 7 p.m. through September 29, shoppers can use SNAP benefits and get a Market Match bonus of up to $25 a week on produce, and the market runs a standing food drive for the Renton Food Bank. Free ten-hour parking is available a short walk away at the City Center Parking Garage on South 2nd Street.
Both spaces are booked, used, and clearly built for daily life rather than a single event. That is the part of the plan that already worked.
The Piece That Hasn't Shown Up
The third space, Renton Market, is the one meant to make all of this permanent. The plan calls for converting the old Pavilion Event Center into a year-round indoor market with roughly 11,783 square feet of stall space, twelve kiosk-style vendor spots for small and rotating businesses, two larger anchor restaurant spaces, and a classroom kitchen for cooking demonstrations and community programs. Developer Dave Brethauer's company, Logan Market LLC, signed a 10-year lease with the city on March 23, running from April 2026 through March 2036, with two optional five-year extensions.
Brethauer has done this kind of work in Renton before. He and his wife renovated the Cortona Building downtown, which now houses Boon Boona Coffee, Urban Sprouts, The Pencil Test, and Ascendance, and won a King County preservation award for the project. His stated bar for tenants there was simple.
"My requirement for every tenant was simple: it had to be experiential. It needed to give people a reason to come downtown, linger and connect."
That is the standard Renton Market is supposed to meet. The timeline has not cooperated. Bid documents tied to the project's federal and state funding listed a contractual substantial completion date of January 31 for the building shell. City staff told the council in February they expected smaller kiosk vendors operational by June, with anchor restaurant build-outs taking longer. The city handed the keys to Logan Market on June 6, the same day as the grand opening celebration, which started the clock on the operator's own build-out work rather than the city's. As of the most recent public updates, no vendors have been named and no opening date has been announced. The market's own website still describes itself as an "upcoming public market" that is "currently under construction."
Here's a side-by-side of where things actually stand:
| Space | Opened | What You'll Find There Now | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legacy Square | June 6, 2026 | Outdoor stage with LED screen, futsal court, event lawn, movie and concert series | Fully active |
| Piazza Park | June 6, 2026 (renovated) | Renton Farmers Market Tuesdays through Sept. 29, new playground, futsal court | Fully active |
| Renton Market | Not yet | Building shell complete, vendor space designed, operator signed | Under construction, no vendors named |
Two spaces built for daily use are getting daily use. The one built to anchor the whole project year-round is still the one you can only see through a construction fence.
What Happens After September 29
This is the part worth paying attention to if you actually live nearby. The farmers market is seasonal by design and closes for the year on the 29th. Legacy Square's programming this year has been branded around summer, from the Summer Concert Series to Summer Sundays, which is a reasonable choice for a space that launched in June but leaves an open question about what fills Tuesday and Friday nights once the weather turns and the market packs up its tents.
In a normal year, that gap would be a minor seasonal lull. This year it lands at the exact moment Renton Market was supposed to be open and pulling foot traffic through the winter. Without named vendors or a public date, the space that was designed to be downtown's constant, whatever the season, is the one piece not yet carrying its share. Anyone who found themselves at Piazza Park most Tuesdays this summer will want to check rentonwa.gov's Legacy Square events page as fall programming gets announced, since that is currently the only place tracking what replaces the market slot.
Where Else Downtown Is Worth Your Time Right Now
The new construction isn't the whole downtown story. Renton Civic Theatre, the group that performed at the grand opening, has been a downtown fixture for years and isn't going anywhere regardless of how the Market build-out plays out. A block over, New Zen Japanese Restaurant on South 3rd Street has leaned into its location across from the new park as part of its own identity. And the Cortona Building's tenant mix, Boon Boona Coffee, Urban Sprouts, The Pencil Test, and Ascendance, is the closest thing downtown already has to what Brethauer is trying to build again at the Market: small, independent, and worth a special trip.
Renton just marked its 125th year as a city, with a celebration at Liberty Park on September 6 hosted by the Renton Historical Society. The HEART Block is arguably the most significant physical change to downtown in that entire span. Two-thirds of it already proved it can hold a crowd on a Tuesday night in September. Whether the third piece shows up before the next Tuesday night crowd has somewhere else to be is the actual test, and it's one nobody has passed yet.
Downtown investment like this shapes what a Renton address is worth to the next buyer, whether that's a growing family looking at a starter home near the Cedar River Trail or an investor eyeing rental demand close to a walkable core. If you're weighing a move in Renton, wondering what a project like this means for your street, or want a clear-eyed read on your own home's value, AMP Properties Group NW knows this market block by block. Reach out for an instant home valuation or to talk through what's next.
