Ten years ago today—on August 26, 2016—Mercado on Fifth hosted its very first night market.
What began as a bold idea to create a welcoming space for Latino culture, entrepreneurship, and community has grown into the region’s largest Latino-serving organization. Today, we celebrate more than an anniversary. We celebrate ten years of families gathering, businesses beginning, traditions being preserved, friendships forming, and a community discovering what it could build together.
From its inception, Mercado on Fifth has been a place of economic opportunity.
The first night market created a platform where entrepreneurs—many of them first-time business owners—could introduce their food, products, talents, and ideas to the Quad Cities. Over the past decade, Mercado has helped vendors test new concepts, develop loyal customers, increase their incomes, build confidence, and take meaningful steps toward opening storefronts and growing sustainable businesses.
Every purchase made at a vendor booth has represented something larger - an investment in a family, a dream, and the economic vitality of our region.
Yet Mercado was never built by one person, one family, or one organization. The community built Mercado.
It was started by Bob and Maria Ontiveros and the founding leaders who believed the Quad Cities needed a place that proudly celebrated Latina/o culture while creating economic opportunity. It was built by the vendors who took a chance on a new market, sometimes arriving with little more than a table, a family recipe, a handmade product, and a dream. It was built by volunteers who gave their time, artists and performers who shared their gifts, and families who returned Friday after Friday.
It was built by neighbors who brought their friends, community partners who opened doors, and local businesses, foundations, sponsors, and donors who believed that investing in Mercado was an investment in the entire region.
As Mercado has grown, that support has grown with us. Sponsors and donors have helped us expand our programming, strengthen public safety, present cultural performances, support entrepreneurs, improve our gathering spaces, and keep Mercado accessible to the community. Their generosity has helped a single night market become a trusted regional institution and a source of pride for the Quad Cities.
The clearest measure of Mercado’s impact, however, may be found in the generations of families who have made it part of their lives.
In a recent Facebook post, a community member shared what it was like for her family to return to Mercado for the first time without her father. She wrote about how much he loved Mercado—the food, the music, the dancing, and especially the people. He would sometimes arrive early to set up the family’s “corner,” creating a familiar gathering place for his family, particularly when his grandchildren were performing with the Quad City Ballet Folklorico.
He was deeply proud of his son, his grandchildren, and all the young people carrying these cultural traditions forward.
After his passing, the family returned to Mercado and honored him by setting up his usual place beside their mother. They applauded the children, shared good food, and tried to experience the evening as he would have wanted them to. Members of the community stopped to say hello, embrace the widow, and remember a man whose presence had become part of Mercado itself.
This family member’s reflection reminds us that Mercado’s multigenerational impact cannot be measured only through attendance numbers, vendor sales, or programs delivered. It is also measured through family traditions, familiar gathering places, shared meals, children’s performances, warm embraces, and the memories of those whose presence helped make Mercado feel like home.
This family’s “corner” represents something many Mercado families understand. Over ten years, families have developed their own traditions and claimed their own special places within Mercado. Children who first arrived holding a parent’s or grandparent’s hand have grown into teenagers and young adults. Some have performed on our stages, worked at their family’s booth, volunteered, translated for relatives, welcomed visitors, or begun imagining businesses and community projects of their own.
Other members of our Mercado family have watched their children grow up here, too.
These young people have danced to music from the main stage, watched Lucha Libre and ballet folklórico, created art, practiced Spanish, tasted foods connected to their heritage, and seen Latino entrepreneurs, performers, professionals, and community leaders celebrated publicly. They have experienced their culture not at the margins, but at the center of a shared community celebration.There are children that have never known our QC community without Mercado on Fifth.
For them, Mercado has been more than a Friday-night destination. It has been a place where they could see their families, identities, and possibilities reflected back to them with pride. It has shown them that their culture is worthy of celebration, that their ideas have value, and that there is a community ready to support their dreams.
That sense of belonging is part of Mercado’s multigenerational legacy—and one of the most meaningful investments we can make in the future of our region.
Over the past decade, Mercado has become a bridge between generations, cultures, neighborhoods, entrepreneurs, institutions, and communities. It is a place where longtime Quad Cities residents and newcomers meet one another, where tradition and innovation stand side by side, and where Latina/o culture is not simply included but celebrated as an essential part of our region’s identity.
Mercado is also a place where community members show up for one another—in celebration and in loss. We cheer when children take the stage, support families as they build businesses, welcome new neighbors, honor those who came before us, and sit beside one another when a familiar gathering place feels different because someone we love is no longer there.
That, too, is community.
As we honor this milestone, we recognize that Mercado’s story is still being written.
The same community that helped build Mercado will continue to shape what comes next. Our future will be built by the next generation of entrepreneurs, by children who grew up at the market, and by returning families, volunteers, performers, partners, sponsors, donors, and community leaders who believe in what Mercado makes possible.
Together, we will create new opportunities for small businesses. We will expand cultural, educational, and family programming. We will continue strengthening Mercado as a welcoming public space where people feel safe, connected, supported, and proud. And we will preserve the spirit of that first night market: the belief that culture, community, and economic opportunity can grow together.
To every founder, board member, staff member, vendor, volunteer, performer, sponsor, donor, partner, neighbor, and guest who has been part of these ten years: thank you.
To the families who have made Mercado part of their traditions: thank you.
To the children who have grown up here: Mercado’s future belongs to you.
And to those whose presence remains with us in the music, the dancing, the stories, the traditions, and the familiar places where their families still gather: we remember and honor you.
You helped turn an idea into an organization, a market into a community, and a single night into a lasting legacy.
Happy 10th anniversary, Mercado on Fifth.
Here’s to the people who built it, the generations who have grown within it, and the community that will carry it forward.
Frances Williams
Executive Director & Steward in Service
