If your mental map of Old Sac still ends at a candy store, a saloon photo booth, and the sea lions under the Tower Bridge, it is out of date by about eighteen months. The district you may have written off as a field-trip destination is in the middle of the biggest tenant turnover and public-investment cycle it has seen in a generation, and most of the visible changes are landing between June and September of this year.
The thesis is simple. Old Sacramento is not a preserved tourist set piece anymore. It is a working neighborhood in transition, and this summer is when a resident can actually watch the transition happen.
The Paperworks Building is doing most of the work
The clearest signal of change is one building on 2nd Street. The Paperworks Building, which already hosts stores like the Wonderland Gift Shop and Big VIP Clothing, is set to host a variety of new businesses throughout the summer, including Wild Sisters, the recycling studio EcoPress and the clothing and gift boutique Dearisa. That is a bookstore, a recycling-oriented studio, and an independent boutique arriving in one building in one season.
The interesting part is who is behind it. Troy Carlson, the owner of The Paperworks and Stage 9 Entertainment, bought the building last year and set out to curate it as a single unified space rather than lease it piecemeal. That curation is why the new tenants feel of a piece with each other rather than a random collection of leases. For a resident who last visited when Paperworks was mostly a novelty stop, the block reads differently now.
The Rio City corner, redrawn
The most-watched vacancy on the waterfront belonged to Rio City Café. Rio City stopped operating in August 2024 after the City of Sacramento closed the waterfront dining patio for safety reasons, following an earlier closure of another outdoor dining section in 2019. The city owns the building and would have been responsible for fixing the safety issues but declined to do so, and co-owner Stephanie Miller said she was never told why. For more than thirty years, that patio was one of the few places in the city where you could eat dinner directly over the river. Losing it was the kind of thing that made locals stop coming.
The replacement takes over this summer. Der Biergarten is an urban, outdoor German beer garden concept featuring over thirty rotating taps of German, Belgian, and craft beers alongside fresh sausages, pretzels, and sausage platters, and the Old Sac waterfront location is targeting a summer opening. Der Biergarten will occupy the building on the waterfront of the Sacramento River, and owner Sean Derfield said the permitting and construction process has gone smoothly. The concept, an open-air beer garden rather than a full white-tablecloth restaurant, sidesteps the specific patio-deck problem that shut Rio City down.
Whether you loved Rio City or never went, this is a different kind of anchor tenant. A beer garden pulls a different weekday crowd than a sit-down dinner house, and it changes what the block feels like at 6 p.m. on a Wednesday.
Evangeline's is open again
The other emotional beat of the summer is a reopening rather than a debut. Evangeline's Costume Mansion, forced to close temporarily last year after a fire, is back. Store Manager Rachel Immel remembers around forty fire trucks on the scene, and said that without the sprinklers a block or two could have been lost. Direct fire damage was small, but the mix of smoke and water meant the store had to dispose of virtually all first-floor inventory and much of the backstock in the basement. If you have not been in since the reopening, the store looks fully restocked and the ground floor has been redone.
What the city just approved, and why it matters this summer
The tenant changes above are happening on top of a much larger public commitment. On December 2, 2025, the Sacramento City Council approved Phase A of the Waterfront Reinvestment Program. Here is what that first phase actually funds, per the council-approved scope:
| Phase A element | What it changes on the ground |
|---|---|
| Boardwalk replacement | The aging wooden boardwalk, source of the "sticky in spots" complaint locals have made for years, gets rebuilt |
| Deck repairs near Rio City Café | The failed patio structure that closed Rio City is repaired by the city, the party responsible for it |
| New public market buildings | Purpose-built retail and food space along the river rather than converted historic storefronts |
| Children's play area | Designed in partnership with the Wilton Rancheria Tribe |
Councilmember Phil Pluckebaum, who represents the area, described Phase A as focused on visible upgrades along the riverfront, including boardwalk replacement, deck repairs near Rio City, new public market buildings, and a play area designed with the Wilton Rancheria Tribe, with the goal of activating the space so people have better access to the water both visibly and physically. The council approved the phase at its December 2 meeting and structured the program so the city can make progress as funding for later phases is secured.
What this means for the current summer is that the tenant activity is not happening in a vacuum. Private operators are betting on Old Sac at the same moment the city has committed capital to fixing the reasons locals stopped coming. That alignment is uncommon and worth paying attention to.
Waterfront Adventures is the honest reason to go in June
The district's own summer programming is quieter than Farm-to-Fork and easier to miss. Old Sacramento Waterfront's June programming, called Waterfront Adventures, runs themed experiences, special promotions, and activities hosted by local businesses throughout the district, focused on riverside experiences, outdoor dining, and hidden corners. It is not a single-weekend festival. It is a month of small activations spread across individual businesses, which is exactly the format that rewards a local who already knows the district's geometry.
If you want a specific plan:
- Walk the boardwalk before it gets replaced. This is the last summer of the current one.
- Stop at Evangeline's on the ground floor. The rebuild is worth seeing on its own.
- Check the Paperworks Building tenant list before you go. New openings are staggered across the summer, not all live on the same weekend.
- Time a visit around late afternoon so you can end at the river when Der Biergarten opens its doors in July.
If you keep walking east
Old Sac does not exist in isolation from the rest of downtown, and a summer evening on the waterfront pairs cleanly with what is happening a few blocks inland. Concerts in the Park has evolved from a battle of the bands into a rite of passage for Sacramento musical talent and a full music festival, free and open to everyone, running every Summer Friday at Cesar Chavez Plaza. Park downtown once, spend an hour on the boardwalk, walk to Cesar Chavez for the show.
Further out on the calendar, the September food weekend has changed shape too. After eleven years on Capitol Mall, Visit Sacramento's Farm to Fork Festival moved locations, and September 26 to 28, 2025 introduced Farm to Fork at Terra Madre Americas inside and around the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center, bringing one of the world's most popular food events to the U.S. Terra Madre Americas, introduced in 2025, is a three-day global convergence featuring food and drink tastings from around the world, live music, celebrity chef demonstrations, and interactive workshops and panels. If you have not been since it was a Capitol Mall street festival, plan on a different kind of afternoon.
The point
The Old Sac you decided you were done with is not the Old Sac that exists this summer. A curated retail building, a beer garden replacing a lost dining anchor, a costume shop rebuilt after a fire, and a city council that has finally put money against the deck and boardwalk problems are all landing in the same short window. That is the neighborhood story worth knowing, whether or not you ever plan to sell the house you already own here.
When it is time to think about the house itself, whether that means a downsizing conversation, an estate transition, or a straightforward sale in a changing part of the city, Lee Mahla brings four and a half decades of Sacramento experience to the table. Schedule a free consultation to talk through what your next chapter looks like.
