For eighteen months, the historic core of downtown had a fence around it. Diagonal parking gone, sidewalks torn up, tree wells full of rebar, most of the block from Washington to Garfield living behind orange mesh. If you moved to Loveland in 2024, you have never really seen Fourth Street the way it was designed to work.
That changes this summer. The concert series is back on Thursdays, a third block of the rebuild is finished, and two of the addresses locals have been asking about for a year finally have real timelines. Here is what is open, what is coming, and what it actually adds up to.
What reopened, block by block
The Heart Improvement Plan is a five-block, $24.5 million reconstruction of Fourth Street from N. Garfield to N. Washington. Construction started in February 2025 and is scheduled to wrap in fall 2026. What is worth knowing as a resident is where each block stands right now.
- Block 5, Railroad to Garfield. Reopened to cars and pedestrians in March 2026. The Downtown Development Authority marked it with a block party on Friday, June 5, tied to the Bluegrass & Brews Festival, expanded to a two-day grand opening.
- Blocks 1 and 2, Washington to Lincoln. Utilities and streetscape done. Landscaping, irrigation, and catenary lighting installation began in April 2026, meaning the string-lit look most people picture when they hear "reimagined Main Street" is happening now, not next year.
- Remaining blocks, Lincoln to Railroad. These are the two blocks with the highest foot-traffic tenants, which is why the DDA staged construction east-to-west in the first place.
The visible changes are practical rather than cosmetic. Sidewalks meet ADA accessibility, a five-foot amenity zone adds pedestrian lighting, bike racks, decorative fencing, and integrated public art, and diagonal parking is converted to parallel to make room for patio expansion and walkability. The patio expansion piece is the sleeper detail. It is what will make the difference between a rebuilt street and a street people actually stay on after dinner.
Thursday nights at the Lagoon, with an asterisk
The free Loveland Summer Concert Series is back at the Foote Lagoon Amphitheater at 500 E. 3rd St. after a full year off. The series was canceled in 2025 after the City of Loveland faced a budget shortfall, compounded by amphitheater repairs. If you moved here in the last twelve months, you might not know the tradition exists.
The 2026 run is four Thursdays at 7 p.m., July 9, July 16, July 23, and July 30, kicking off with Ain't No Mountain High Enough, a Motown and Stax tribute band featuring DZIRAE GOLD. Concerts are booked and produced through the city-owned Rialto Theater at 228 E. 4th St., a block away.
The asterisk is worth stating plainly, because it affects how residents should think about the series going forward:
While the concerts are back in 2026, city leaders say funding beyond this season remains uncertain. Loveland continues to face competing financial priorities, including deferred maintenance on city-owned facilities.
Translation for anyone who has been in Loveland more than a few years: this is not automatically a permanent revival. If you have kids who like the Lagoon nights, or if you have been meaning to walk a picnic blanket down from your neighborhood for the last three summers, this is the season to actually do it.
Two Fourth Street addresses worth watching
Downtown has had a slow-drip announcement cycle for two years, and it is easy to lose track of what is real, what is rumor, and what is already under construction. Two addresses are worth putting on your mental map right now.
243 E. 4th St. — The Dug & Firkin. In October of 2025, a small craft brewery and pub began renovating 243 East 4th Street to become The Dug & Firkin, a British brewpub with British ales and British eats, along with other beers, fine wines, and specialty cocktails. Loveland has cycled between nine and eleven breweries over the last decade, so a new one is not, on its own, a headline. What is interesting is the format. A brewpub with a food program of its own on Fourth Street reads more like a Fort Collins Old Town operator than the taproom-only model most of the local breweries run.
225 E. 4th St. — Rio Grande. After months of speculation, the Fort Collins Tex-Mex operator confirmed a Loveland location. Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant, which has been in Fort Collins since 1986, is making its way to Loveland, with its first location there expected to open in the first quarter of 2027. The Loveland site is 225 E. Fourth St., a 6,720-square-foot building that's seen plenty of different uses over its 133-year history, directly across from the Rialto. Founder Pat McGaughran told BizWest the company had originally mapped a 2027 opening in a five-year plan set in 2024, so the timeline is deliberate rather than reactive.
There is a third one to keep an eye on that has less consumer-facing intrigue but bigger implications for the block. The Loveland Planning Commission approved a height exception for the Draper Heartland project, clearing the way for the redevelopment of most of a block of Fourth Street in downtown. A full block of new mixed-use is a different order of change than a single storefront turning over.
A weeknight map for July
Here is what the current calendar actually looks like for someone already in town, without duplicating anything you would find on the city's events page.
| Night | Anchor | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Thursdays, July 9–30 | Summer Concert Series, 7 p.m. | Foote Lagoon Amphitheater, 500 E. 3rd |
| Friday and Saturday evenings | Patio expansion on the reopened Block 5 | 4th between Railroad and Garfield |
| Rotating summer dates | One Sweet Summer events at the Foundry Plaza | The Foundry, 4th and Lincoln |
| Any night | Arcade + cocktails at The Flipside | SW corner of 4th and Cleveland |
| Movie night | Metrolux Dine-In | The Foundry |
The Loveland Downtown District hosts more than 60 events in the Foundry Plaza through its One Sweet Summer series between May and September, which is the piece most residents underuse. The Foundry Plaza is a five-minute walk from Loveland Aleworks on the Garfield end and about the same from The Flipside on the Cleveland end, meaning any of those events can be the middle of a walking loop rather than the whole outing.
What this summer is different from the last one
For anyone who has lived in Loveland for a while, the honest read is that downtown has been the second-priority destination for years. Centerra has the restaurants a family defaults to on a Tuesday. The Promenade Shops have the after-work anchor. Fourth Street had the character, the Rialto, and one or two reliable brewpubs, but it also had a construction fence in front of most of it.
Three things are shifting at once this year. The blocks that opened in March gave the DDA a working template, and the landscaping and lighting on Blocks 1 and 2 is arriving over the summer instead of next spring. The Foote Lagoon series is running again after a year dark, which reintroduces a weekly reason to be downtown after 6 p.m. And the two most-asked-about Fourth Street storefronts have publicly committed timelines. The reason to walk past the Rialto is no longer just the Rialto.
None of that makes downtown finished. Two blocks are still active construction, the concert series funding is a season-to-season conversation, and the Rio Grande doors do not open until 2027. What it does mean is that the shape of Fourth Street a year from now is legible for the first time in a long time. If you have been meaning to reintroduce yourself to it, the summer to do that is this one.
If you are thinking about what the downtown reset means for the surrounding neighborhoods, or you have questions about how a project like Draper Heartland ripples out into the blocks around it, The Dennis Schick Team is happy to talk it through. Reach out any time.
