Church Street Marketplace — Attraction in Burlington

This is a nice walking street in the heart of downtown Burlington. You can come here, park at one of the nearby garages, and have a great time, but there are a few things you should be mindful of. This is the middle of a city, and just like every US city there can be some bad people around - just be observant because at times there are some pretty sketchy people walking around, and many times in big groups. This is obviously more noticeable the later in the day in the visit. There are some homeless people begging on this street as well - not a whole lot, but some do try to call out to you and say weird things (today someone was yelling to me if I wanted to see them dislocate their arm…?), so if you’re bringing your kid here, keep them pretty close to you to be extra careful.

The whole street and shops themselves are very nice and charming if you look past the two things I mentioned above. Parking is great, especially on Sunday where one of the nearby garages has free parking all day! There are tons of great home goods stores, gift shops, restaurants, coffee shops, bars, clothing stores, cosmetic stores, and more! You essentially have everything in a 3-4 block diameter in the Church Street area. Some of the best restaurants in Vermont are right next to/along this street, and a few blocks in any direction, you’ll find even more things to do.

If you’re spending the day in Burlington, come here, visit ECHO Aquarium if you have kids, go down to the lakeshore, maybe rent a boat, ride bikes along Colchester Causeway, visit the Shelburne Museum, try a Montreal spice bagel, and many more! Downtown Burlington is...

we visited Burlington VT on 6/11/24 about 2 weeks ago and stayed at north beach campground. we do this every other year. we were walking down marketplace, a woman pretended to be friendly came over to pet our dog and start making up a story begging for cash. i told my husband " lets get going". as soon as we walked away, crazy woman showed the ugly side of her. swearing up and down the street. she followed us partially up the street and disappeared. it was quite an unnerving experience. I told this incident to somebody and they totally had the same thing happened. I agree with the other reviewers above that there were no police or security guard. this incident took place in the middle of the week. New downgrade Burlington reminds me of Harlem NY where graffiti was seen on every brick building. I felt like i was in a movie. not sure we'll be visiting after this incident. I almost reported this to Burlington police dept. but their website makes it difficult to report a panhandling incident. it's not consider a crime to panhandle. These homeless people seemed to be entitled to get their cash by harassing people. Town of Burlington need to be proactive not reactive. Safety should be their priority. I don't feel safe walking in Burlington anymore. someone is going to get hurt if this continues at the rate. This was one of our favorite places that we look forward to visiting. this was heart breaking experience to report. if you do visit in Burlington or in any other charming town in the country, prepare a few dollar bills in your pants pocket to avoid taking out your wallet. it might just safe your life....

Went here with my parents during our Vermont Vacation on August 27th 2023. The Church Street Marketplace is basically a open street mall that consists of local shops and restaurants, as well as franchises like Subway and Ben and Jerrys. We parked around the corner from Phoenix books, in a parking garage that seemed a bit snug for bigger vehicles like our truck. other trucks that we noticed pulled out seemed a bit snug too. Our first stop was Phoenix Books, which was a big bookstore that sold books, and i ended up buying one from there. We walked around, went near a comic book store that was on the edge of the marketplace. Outta nowhere a black man comes out with a gun, and shouted something that i couldn't hear, and did fire a few rounds towards what seemed to be an empty area... To be honest, that made me feel very unsafe, especially since there could have been kids around, and someone could have been seriously hurt. We did see cops later on, so maybe that was taken care of. We also started walking the other way when we realized this person had a gun. Also, one is walking around and we see homeless people, which can ruin the touristy vibe. Anyways, we walked into A Vinyl record store, which was really cool to see sealed vinyls from the 70's and 80's, as well as jazz vinyls. We didn't buy anything but browsed around. After walking and not finding much, we decided to go eat at Ken's Pizza & pub, which had a tiki bar, and that was very enjoyable. After ken's pizza, we went to our car and went sightseeing from the view of the car. Recommend this place for the unique shops. Probably won't be here again...