Walk east from Lincoln Avenue on Fourth Street today and you will pass under the marquee of the Rialto Theater on a sidewalk that did not exist in June. New pavers. Wider walkways built for the patio tables that never used to fit. A block that spent the better part of eight months behind chain-link fencing reopened to cars and pedestrians on July 24, 2026, and if you had not been downtown in a while, you might not recognize where you were standing.
That single block, the one running from Lincoln to Cleveland, is the fourth of five to come back online since the City of Loveland's Heart Improvement Plan broke ground on Fourth Street in February 2025. Four down, one to go. But the order those blocks reopened in, and which businesses chose to bet on which block and when, tells you more about downtown's actual recovery than any "construction is almost finished" headline does.
Four Blocks Down, One Still Under Wraps
The Fourth Street Revitalization Project split downtown into five construction zones, and they have not finished in numerical order. Here is where things stand as of late August 2026:
| Block | Cross Streets | Status | Notable Anchors |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 & 2 | Washington to Lincoln (east end) | Reopened, officially celebrated with the Festival of Lights | B Sweet Cupcakes, East End Ale House / Side Pockets |
| 5 | Railroad to Garfield (west end) | Reopened March 2026, official grand opening June 5 during an expanded two-day Bluegrass & Brews Festival | Loveland Aleworks, Backyard Tap, The Egg Kings, Lucky Dog Spa, The Extra Mile |
| 3 | Lincoln to Cleveland (the historic core) | Reopened to traffic July 24, 2026, official grand opening set for September 12 alongside Pastels On 5th Street | Rialto Theater |
| 4 | Cleveland to Railroad (final block) | Underground work done, paving underway, targeted for late fall 2026 with railroad-crossing intersections finished before the holidays | N/A, still under construction |
The whole project carries a $24.5 million price tag, split between $12 million in Utility Enterprise Funds and $12.5 million in Certificates of Participation. No General Fund dollars were used, which is worth knowing if you have ever wondered whether a road project like this shows up on your property tax bill. It does not.
Nobody Cut a Ribbon. They Timed It to a Festival Instead.
Here is the pattern that outside coverage of this project keeps missing: the Downtown Development Authority never staged a single, standalone grand opening. Every finished block got folded into whatever community event was already on the calendar. Blocks 1 and 2 opened alongside the Festival of Lights. Block 5's completion rode the coattails of Bluegrass & Brews, a festival that typically pulls 10,000 to 12,000 visitors downtown over its expanded two-day run. Block 3, the one with the Rialto, will get its official celebration paired with Pastels On 5th Street on September 12, an event that also raises money for the local nonprofit Alternatives to Violence.
Loveland DDA Director Sean Hawkins called Block 3 "the heart of our downtown" when it reopened, and that phrase is doing real work. The city and the DDA deliberately sequenced the loudest celebration for the block that carries the most cultural weight rather than the one that finished fastest. If you want to know when downtown Loveland will feel fully recovered to the average resident, September 12 is a better marker than any construction completion date.
Businesses Aren't Betting on "Downtown." They're Betting on a Specific Block.
This is the part that matters if you actually live here and want to know where to spend a Saturday. The new restaurants and returning favorites aren't scattering evenly across five blocks. They are landing precisely where the construction fencing came down first.
Paulie's Italian Grill spent years as a beloved sit-down spot before closing, and when its owner brought the business back in mid-July as a food truck, he picked 103 West Fourth Street, just east of The Egg Kings, which is to say the west end block that reopened back in March. That's not a coincidence. It's basically the same stretch of downtown he operated in before, chosen the moment the sidewalks in front of it were usable again.
Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant made an even more pointed bet. The Fort Collins chain, founded in 1986, announced in April that its sixth location, called The Rio, will open in the first quarter of 2027 at 225 Fourth Street, a 6,720-square-foot building that has sat vacant since 2006. The address matters: it sits directly across from the Rialto Theater, on the same block that just got its official reopening treatment. Rio Grande's founder Pat McGaughran said his team had "hopes there would be an opportunity there in Loveland somewhere along the way," and the opportunity they took was the one block downtown just spent a year and a half rebuilding around its most recognizable landmark.
Driven Steakhouse fits the same pattern from the opposite direction. It opened in May 2025 with seating for about 80, a marbled-glass bar, and a menu built by Culinary Institute of America alum chef Thomas Newsted, more than half a year before Blocks 1 and 2 finished. That is the kind of bet that only makes sense if you are confident the fencing is temporary and the corridor underneath it is worth showing up early for.
What's Still Coming Before the Snow Flies
Block 4, the stretch between Cleveland Avenue and Railroad Avenue, is the one holdout. As of the city's late July 2026 update, crews had finished the underground utility work, water lines, storm water, electric, and fiber, and had already installed the large sandstone art pedestals at the block's corners while roadway paving got underway. The city is targeting late fall for that block's completion, with the trickier railroad-crossing intersections wrapping up before the holidays.
Once that last stretch is done, a handful of downtown fixtures return. Nine rotating sculptures from the Art Advocacy Project will go up on those new sandstone pedestals, part of the city's Art in Public Places program, with a corridor-wide public art installation planned for early 2027. The Rialto Theater will install a new marquee facing Fourth Street and bring back its bronze "Persistence of Vision" sculpture. The historic Fourth Street clock, currently being professionally restored with DDA funding, will go back up near its original spot. And the city's official Christmas tree is expected to return to its traditional home in front of the Rialto for the holiday season, which would put the corridor's most visible symbol of normalcy back in place right as Block 4 crosses the finish line.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
If your mental model of downtown Loveland is still "it's under construction," that model is up to eighteen months out of date for four of five blocks, since the first fencing went up in February 2025. If you've been avoiding the stretch around the Rialto because you remember it fenced off, that ended on July 24, 2026. The one place still worth checking before you plan an evening out is the Cleveland-to-Railroad stretch, where sidewalks are still being rebuilt.
The businesses making real financial commitments right now aren't waiting for a press release that says "downtown is finished." They're reading the same block map everyone else has access to and placing their bets accordingly. That's a useful habit to borrow, whether you're deciding where to grab dinner this weekend or just trying to figure out which parts of your own neighborhood have actually changed since you last paid attention.
You can track the block-by-block schedule yourself through the City of Loveland's Heart Improvement Plan updates, and North Forty News has been covering each reopening as it happens.
If you're curious what any of this means for property values or timing along the corridor, or you're just weighing whether Loveland fits what you're looking for next, our Loveland neighborhood guide is a good place to start. And if you'd rather talk it through directly, At Home Realty is happy to walk you through it. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready.
