Downtown Loveland This Summer: A Local's Field Guide to the Reopened Blocks

Walk east from Lincoln Avenue on a Wednesday evening in July and the difference is hard to miss. The concrete is new. The gutters are gone from the curb. The sidewalks are wider than they were last summer, and there is a good chance a bluegrass band is warming up two blocks away at The Foundry Plaza. If you live in Loveland, you have watched the Heart Improvement Plan turn 4th Street into a construction detour for the better part of two years. This summer is the one where it starts paying back.

Here is the argument this post makes: downtown Loveland is not slowly recovering from construction. It is quietly being rebuilt around events, and the same summer the third block reopened is also the summer a Grateful Dead tribute band takes the plaza, a Tex-Mex operator claims a storefront empty since 2006, and two national anchors reshape the retail edges of the city. If you already live here, the interesting question is not whether downtown is coming back. It is where to be, on which night, before the next block closes.

Which Blocks Are Actually Open Right Now

The Heart Improvement Plan covers five blocks of 4th Street from N. Garfield Avenue to N. Washington Avenue, a $24.5 million project the city broke ground on in February 2025 and expects to finish around October 2026. If you drive through downtown once a week, the current map matters more than the total budget.

As of mid-March 2026, the third of five blocks reopened, the stretch between Railroad Avenue and Garfield Avenue. That reopening was tied to a two-day grand opening block party during the Bluegrass & Brews Festival on June 5, an event that typically draws between 10,000 and 12,000 visitors. Blocks 1 and 2 finished their underground utility and streetscape work earlier, with landscaping, irrigation, and catenary lighting installation slated for April 2026 once warmer weather set in.

Two blocks are still active. Crews are working on Blocks 3 and 4 daily between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., installing utilities, electrical infrastructure, lighting bases, and new waterlines. The city expects Block 3 wrapped by late summer 2026 and Block 4 before the end of the year. If you are planning around construction, the Foundry Parking Garage entrance off 2nd Street between Cleveland and Lincoln is still the shortest walk to the plaza and to the businesses that took the hardest hit during closures, including B Sweet Cupcakes and East End Ale House.

The Detail Most Residents Missed

Here is the piece of the project worth understanding, because it explains why the block party model is going to keep expanding. The new 4th Street does not drain to the curbs the way normal streets do. It drains to the center. As the city's stormwater team put it, the center-drain design is meant to make 4th Street more visually consistent, more pedestrian-friendly, and easier to close for public events, festivals, and concerts.

Translation: the street was rebuilt to double as a plaza. The gutters are gone because tables and stages sit better on flat pavement. Underground, a treatment vault filters runoff before it reaches the Big Thompson River, which is the sort of detail nobody sees but everyone benefits from during a summer downpour on a festival night. The city also finished the stormwater and waterline work ahead of schedule and under budget, replacing pipes that in some cases dated to the late 1800s. If you have wondered why the closures felt longer than the surface work required, the answer is that the utility team was quietly buying downtown another century of function while the street was open.

The Wednesday Night Concert Lineup, Straight from the Source

The Loveland Downtown District publishes the whole One Sweet Summer schedule, but the piece most residents want on hand is the Wednesday night lineup at The Foundry Plaza. Every show is free, all ages, and starts around 6:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Bring a chair.

July 22 is the one to circle. Shakedown Street has been performing the Grateful Dead catalog for over 30 years, and this is the second annual tribute night downtown. It starts a half hour earlier than the rest of the series, which means dinner before the show, not after.

Around the concerts, the plaza runs a Kids Zone from noon to 2 p.m. on Wednesdays from June 10 through August 5, with lawn games, the Foundry splash pad, and rotating arts and crafts. Fly Fitness runs free Sunday classes at 8 a.m., and the Loveland Orchestra plays its annual Symphony on the Plaza, a free outdoor concert sponsored by the DDA. For the first time in 2026, the Blues Music Festival was merged with a Classic Car Show and moved to a new downtown location on Saturday, May 30.

The New Neighbors on 4th, at Centerra, and at The Ranch

Three arrivals are worth putting on a resident's radar this summer, because they change what downtown and the east edge of the city will look like a year from now.

The Rio at 225 Fourth Street. Rio Grande Mexican Restaurants announced its sixth location, directly across from the Rialto Theater, with an opening targeted for early 2027. The 6,720-square-foot building was constructed in 1893 and had been vacant since 2006. Fort Collins-based VFLA Architecture + Interiors is designing the space, and founder Pat McGaughran has estimated about 40 employees. The Loveland Downtown District has previously said the city at one point considered demolishing the building to create a parking cut-through, which is the kind of counterfactual that puts the current downtown momentum in perspective.

Bass Pro Shops at Brands at the Ranch. The 130,000-square-foot store anchoring the Brands at the Ranch development on I-25 held a hiring event in February 2026 for more than 180 full- and part-time workers, signaling that opening was close. It will be the sixth Bass Pro location in Colorado.

A Costco-anchored development near Centerra Parkway. In February 2026, Loveland City Council approved a business assistance agreement supporting a proposed 400,000-square-foot commercial development southeast of the Railway Flats Apartments, anchored by a roughly 160,000-square-foot Costco. Infrastructure construction was set to begin in 2026 with initial tenant openings anticipated in 2028. Loveland does not currently have a Costco, so this is the shift most residents will feel at the grocery cart level.

A Weeknight Plan You Can Actually Use

If you have not been downtown in a month, here is a practical route:

• Park in the Foundry Parking Garage, entering on 2nd Street from Lincoln or Cleveland.
• Walk one block east to the newly reopened Railroad-to-Garfield block of 4th Street to see the widened sidewalks, catenary lighting, and stone seating in place.
• Grab dinner from a downtown business that pushed through the worst of the construction, then bring it to the Foundry Plaza for the Wednesday night set.
• On Fridays and Saturdays, use 5th and 6th Streets as your east-west route around any active block closures.

The through-line for the summer is straightforward. A downtown that felt like a maze in 2025 has, block by block, turned back into a place designed for foot traffic, and specifically for the kind of foot traffic that stays for a concert. The 4th Street corridor was rebuilt to be closed for events without breaking the pavement, and the events calendar has adjusted to fill it.

When You Are Ready to Talk Real Estate

You did not click on this post to read about listings, and I did not write it to sell you one. If your interest in downtown Loveland does eventually turn into a question about what a home nearby is worth, or what your current property could sell for in this market, Megan Beck is happy to have that conversation whenever it makes sense. Until then, save the concert schedule and pick a Wednesday.