Plenty of people on Eau Claire's Northside have driven past the old tire plant on Galloway Street for 30 years. How many have been past the loading docks and into a pottery studio on the second floor?

Banbury Place is huge. The landlord describes it as a mixed-use complex of more than 1.9 million square feet, with office, manufacturing, warehouse, residential and self-storage space. Most of that is closed to the public, and most people who pass it only ever see the outside. One building is the exception. Building 13 houses the studios, shops and small food businesses, and it opens fully on a published calendar. The next of those dates is this Saturday.

Saturday, October 17, at 930 Galloway Street

The Banbury Place Fall Market runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on October 17 in Building 13. Visit Eau Claire's event listing says all three floors will be open, with resident shops and studios plus 30 visiting makers, live music and food. Volume One's listing confirms the event is free.

That 30-maker count is worth setting against February. When the Banbury Art Crawl filled Buildings 10 and 13 in early 2026, WEAU reported 55 visiting artists and 45 resident shops and studios, and organizers expected up to 10,000 visitors. The Fall Market uses one building and roughly half as many visiting makers. That makes it the smaller, quieter way into the same place, and resident studios are still the main draw.

The Building Has a Calendar, and It Runs All Year

The seasonal markets aren't one-off events. The Banbury Place Markets page currently lists four, each running 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Building 13, with the same October 17 Fall Market date that Visit Eau Claire gives:

The February Art Crawl dates come from Volume One's 2026 recap and the Art Crawl's own site, which lists the 2027 event as the 17th annual.

That works out to six scheduled days on the posted calendar when the building opens all together. Some tenants keep their own shop hours in between. After Saturday, the next market listed is the Holiday Market on December 5.

How the Building Got Its Calendar

All of this began with Building 13 itself. According to the Banbury Art Crawl's history, artists Laurie Bieze and Adam Fuller organized the first event to showcase Building 13, and it has run since 2008. What started as a studio open house grew into a winter event big enough to spill into a second building. Four seasonal markets a year now use the same three floors.

So the markets aren't a landlord's promotion added onto an old industrial building. They grew out of artists who were already working there and wanted people to come see it.

Who You'll Find on Three Floors

Banbury's online tenant directory lists a wide mix in Building 13. The directory isn't dated, so the names below are tenants as Banbury lists them. It's a good idea to check that a given shop will be open before making a special trip.

• Clay: Claymore Pottery in Suite 205 and Half Moon Clay in Suites 117 and 123
• Painting and fine art: Holli Jacobson Arts in Suite 121, Amy Wahl Studio in 218, Bowers Art in 215, Mindy Huntress Art in 120 and the Jackalope Art Collective in Suite 22
• Vintage and collectibles: Lucky 13 Vintage in Suite 13 and Allegedly Collectable in Suite 216
• Food and coffee: Jonny's Bakery in Suites 212 and 214, and Elder Valley Farm Coffee in Suite 14
• Making and design: Artifactory in Suite 128; Clubs, Barrels, and Sawdust in 119 and 126; C Design Interior & Textiles in 209 and 211; and Michelle Monson Photography in 202 and 203

Some of these have recent press. Holli Jacobson won Best of Show, Resident Artist at the February 2026 Art Crawl, Volume One reported. A July 2025 Volume One profile of Allegedly Collectable describes a shop full of vintage toys, games, media and collectibles that also offers glass-blowing lessons, with Wednesday-through-Saturday hours at the time of that story.

You'll find clay studios, painters, a bakery and a coffee shop on the same floors. That variety of studios and storefronts is the reason a market day can fill four hours.

The Free Room Most Visitors Skip

On the ground floor, in Suite 29, Banbury runs the Uniroyal Tire Factory Gallery. It's free and open to the public, and Banbury's about page says it displays historic objects, photographs and a timeline of the site. It's the best place to see what Building 13 was before the potters moved in.

That history covers 75 years of tire making. Volume One's history of the plant dates the first experimental tire from the Gillette Safety Tire Company to May 23, 1917. U.S. Rubber bought a substantial interest in 1931 and took control in 1940. The plant was converted to ammunition production during World War II, and tire production came back afterward. U.S. Rubber brought its subsidiaries under the Uniroyal name in 1967.

The end came in 1992. The Leader-Telegram puts the last crew's departure at June 26, 1992. Banbury's own timeline says the closing displaced 1,358 workers. In August 1992, Bill Cigan and Jack Kaiser bought the property and renamed it. The name comes from the Banbury mixer the plant used to blend rubber. WEAU reported in 2017 that Kaiser chose it to keep that industrial connection.

The gallery's timeline is the one stop that ties the rest of the building together. A clay studio in a former rubber plant makes more sense once you've seen what the building used to make.

A Market Saturday, Floor by Floor

The listings don't publish a vendor lineup beyond the 30-maker count, so the resident tenants are the fixed points for planning. One way to spend the four hours:

1. Start with the low-numbered suites. Get coffee at Elder Valley Farm Coffee in Suite 14, then walk the Uniroyal Tire Factory Gallery in Suite 29 before the crowd builds.
2. Work up to the second floor for clay and vintage. Claymore Pottery, Allegedly Collectable and Jonny's Bakery all sit in the 200-numbered suites.
3. Circle back to the 100s. Half Moon Clay, Holli Jacobson Arts, Mindy Huntress Art and Artifactory are clustered there.
4. Save time for the visiting makers. All 30 of them are only in the building for this one day.

The market runs until 4 p.m., which leaves time for a late lunch somewhere else on the Northside afterward.

The old plant on Galloway Street has been part of Northside life for more than a century, through tire making, wartime work, the 1992 closing and the decades since. If you live nearby and have questions about your own corner of the Northside, whether you're thinking about a move or just want to know how the area is changing, Wanda Johnson has followed this part of Eau Claire for more than 30 years and is glad to talk it through. Work With Wanda and schedule a consultation.