Cross Milwaukee at Kedzie right now and you'll notice something that wasn't there in June: nothing. No cars cutting the corner, no fenced-off gravel, no orange barrels funneling foot traffic into a single-file line past the Blue Line entrance. For the first time in longer than most current residents have lived here, the ground around the Centennial Monument is just ground. People stand on it. Kids run across it. On Sundays, 103 vendor booths fill it.
That absence is the story. For most of the last century, the spot Logan Square residents call "the square" wasn't a square at all. It was a road split by a bus turnaround, and the neighborhood's actual gathering space had to happen around the edges of moving traffic. The redesign that just wrapped didn't decorate an existing plaza. It built the plaza for the first time.
Why there was no square to begin with
The Blue Line ran at street level to the Logan Square terminus until 1970, when the line moved underground and the CTA extended it toward O'Hare. What was left on the surface, the wide concrete lot where Milwaukee, Kedzie, and Logan Boulevard converge, became a bus staging area, not a park. Milwaukee Avenue itself sliced directly through the green space around the monument, so the two halves of what looked like one park on a map were, in practice, separated by a live traffic lane.
Plans to fix that go back further than most people realize. A proposal to close that stretch of Milwaukee and reroute Kedzie around a new plaza was first floated in 2011, tied to a project marking the Illinois Bicentennial. It took until May 2024 for the $27 million redesign to actually break ground, and another two years of construction before the ribbon cutting on June 22, 2026.
What actually opened on June 22
At that ceremony, Andy Schneider of Logan Square Preservation connected the new plaza to the neighborhood's original 1869 boulevard-and-park design, noting that the Centennial Monument's cattail streetlights are a direct nod to landscape architect Jens Jensen's work. Mayor Brandon Johnson and Park District CEO Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, the former 35th Ward alderman who pushed the project since taking office in 2015, cut the ribbon on the new Milwaukee plaza together.
The centerpiece on the east side is La Placita, a pedestrian plaza created by relocating Kedzie Avenue northeast of the Blue Line station. Its paving and bench design draw on public space traditions from several Latin American countries, a deliberate reference to the neighborhood's long Latino business community along that stretch of Kedzie. The benches are built to eventually carry mosaics designed by local artists, which means the plaza is still, in a real sense, unfinished on purpose.
The market's first permanent address in eighteen years
If one thing proves the plaza is functioning as intended, it's what happened to the farmers market. For 18 years, the Logan Square Farmers Market operated a few blocks away on Logan Boulevard. When construction started, it spent two seasons on a temporary Kedzie Boulevard site. This year, for the first time, it has what market producer Nilda Esparza of the Logan Square Chamber of Commerce calls its "forever home" in the new Milwaukee plaza and La Placita.
| Market home | Duration |
|---|---|
| Logan Boulevard (original site) | 18 years |
| Kedzie Boulevard (temporary, during construction) | 2 seasons |
| Milwaukee plaza + La Placita (2026 season) | Permanent |
The 2026 season runs Sundays from May 10 through October, with 103 rotating booths, including 44 weekly farmers and 14 vintage vendors set up specifically at La Placita. Mercaditos, a separate market where Logan Square mothers sell handmade goods, returns to the Paseo Prairie Garden at 2612 N. Kedzie Blvd for six Sundays this year, including August 16.
Vendors are already noticing the difference. Angel Robles, co-founder of the bread stall Baskethouse, has sold at the market for five years and says the new space has changed the pace of business, describing lines longer than any previous season and a layout that feels more enclosed and welcoming than the old strip location. Esparza projects the market will draw around 300,000 visitors this season, up from roughly 270,000 last year in the temporary spot, a jump she credits directly to the added room.
Two blocks away, the next plaza is already under construction
Here's the part that makes August 2026 a specific month to pay attention, rather than a generic "things are nice now" update. The Milwaukee plaza is finished, but Logan Square isn't done building. Construction started in late July on a second public space at 2550 N. Milwaukee Ave, the former Megamall lot near Andros Taverna and La Boulangerie. City officials are tentatively calling it the Logan Square Megamall Plaza. It will include seating, a performance space, and a children's play area, and it's expected to be finished by early 2027.
At the same time, the Blue Line station canopy, which hasn't seen a major renovation since it opened, is slated to start its own rehab later this summer, overlapping with the Megamall Plaza build. So the neighborhood is currently running two visible construction projects at once, right after finishing the one that took two years. If you've been wondering why there's still fencing near La Boulangerie's old patio even though the "big" project wrapped in June, that's why. The square isn't a single finished object. It's a rolling one, and this month happens to be the overlap point between what just got done and what's starting next.
What's actually worth walking to this month
The plaza's completion also means the corridor between the monument and Fullerton is now walkable end to end without crossing through what used to be an active traffic lane, and the businesses along it reflect that. Comfort Station, the small arts space tucked into the green space by the monument, is running its August exhibition featuring artists Layan Attari, an emard, and Katie Revilla, free to walk into most weekends.
Food along Milwaukee has kept pace with the construction. The Radicle, the late-night cocktail bar and restaurant from the Daisies team, took over Daisies' original space at 2523 N. Milwaukee Avenue and held its official launch on January 7, 2026, with chef Joe Frillman leaning into Great Lakes ingredients and a menu built around aperitivo and amaro. A few blocks south, Rasa Indian Cuisine and Bar opened this spring at 2763 N. Milwaukee, bringing curries and biryani to a stretch of the avenue that didn't have an Indian kitchen before. A Korean street food concept called Mansun Pocha has also been announced for the former Roadhouse space near the center of the neighborhood, from the owner of New Village Gastro Pub.
A Sunday that only makes sense now
Put it together and you get a loop that wasn't physically possible two summers ago. Start at the farmers market booths lining Logan Boulevard and the Milwaukee plaza, walk east into La Placita to check the vintage vendor tables, cut through the green space past Comfort Station's current show, and end up on Milwaukee for dinner at The Radicle or Rasa, all without once having to wait for a light to cross through what used to be the middle of a traffic circle. The Logan Square Arts Fest tested exactly this layout when it returned June 26 to 28 after skipping 2025 for construction, using the finished plaza as its footprint for the first time in the festival's 17-year history.
None of this is finished. The Megamall Plaza is mid-build, the station canopy work is about to start, and the benches at La Placita are still waiting on their mosaics. But for the first time since the Blue Line went underground more than fifty years ago, the ground in the middle of Logan Square belongs to the people standing on it, not the cars driving through it.
If you're keeping an eye on how a neighborhood like this is changing, physically and otherwise, that's the kind of shift worth understanding before it shows up in a listing description. The Blume Group tracks these changes block by block across Chicago's North Side, and if you're ever curious what a corridor like this means for your own place, our Get a Free Home Valuation tool is a low-pressure way to find out.
