Why Downtown Naperville Isn't Clearing Out for Art Fair Weekend This Year

For as long as most downtown Naperville regulars can remember, the third weekend of September has come with an unspoken plan: leave before the crowds arrive, or accept that your usual walk to dinner is about to take three times as long. The Riverwalk Fine Art Fair does that to a neighborhood. This year, it lands on September 19 and 20, and the Naperville Art League is bringing its 41st edition to the brick paths that most days belong to dog walkers and stroller traffic, not 100-plus juried artists and the crowd that comes to see them.

The old strategy made sense. It doesn't quite hold up anymore, and the reason has nothing to do with the fair itself. It has to do with what opened one block over on Washington Street while everyone was watching the Riverwalk.

The Weekend Locals Learned to Dodge

The scale of this event is worth sitting with for a second. Free admission, more than 100 juried artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, jewelry, ceramics, glass, fiber, and wood, and an estimated 40,000 visitors moving through downtown's business district over a single weekend. That district includes more than 100 shops and over 60 restaurants and spas, which sounds like plenty of room to spread a crowd out until you remember the fair sets up along the same brick spine everyone already uses to get anywhere downtown.

That spine has a shape worth knowing even outside fair weekend. It starts at Fredenhagen Park on the east end, with its landmark clock tower and the Exchange Club Memories Fountain, then runs past the Jaycees Wi-Fi Park near the Municipal Center, across a covered bridge to the Dandelion Fountain and the Smykal Free Speech Pavilion, past the Riverwalk Amphitheater and the Millennium Wall before the Eagle Street Bridge, through the midpoint at Rotary Hill next to the Paddleboat Quarry and the Millennium Carillon in Moser Tower, and on toward Centennial Beach and the Grand Pavilion at the west end. It's a genuinely long walk, and it's also mostly brick, which means uneven patches in spots, a handful of riverbank stairs that aren't step-free, and a wooded western stretch that narrows compared to the downtown core. None of that is a problem on a normal Tuesday. Add 40,000 people to it over 48 hours and you understand exactly why so many locals used to just stay home.

What Changed on Washington and Jefferson

While that math was settling into habit, the restaurant row a block off the river was quietly turning over.

Catch 35 closed its doors at 35 S. Washington St. on June 28, 2025, after 21 years as one of downtown's steady seafood anchors. Its replacement, The Belmont American Steakhouse, has spent this year moving into that same address under Will Cullen's Empire Restaurant Group, the same team behind Empire Burgers + Brew and Fiamme. Cullen was targeting a summer 2026 opening, which puts The Belmont either open or very close to it by the time fair season arrives.

Cullen's group also opened The George earlier this year at 245 S. Washington St., an upscale American tavern built around four distinct seating zones and a menu anchored by the George Dip, a prime rib French dip, and the Badge 13 Burger. That burger is named for George Pradel, Naperville's mayor for 20 years and the department's 13th police officer, and the bun gets stamped table-side with a cast-iron replica of his original badge. Owners Dave Miller and Will Cullen worked with the Naperville Historical Society to trace the name back to several prominent local Georges, including George Knoch, the namesake of Knoch Park.

A few blocks make up the rest of this year's arrivals:

• Le Macaron, a French patisserie at 23 W. Jefferson St.
• Slyce of NY, a pizzeria and chicken and gyro bowl spot at 215 S. Washington St.
• Lennon's L3, a third-floor concept inside the old Craftsman building at 16 W. Jefferson Ave., serving American fare with a historic tavern feel.

That's five new places to eat, all within about two blocks of each other on Washington and Jefferson, none of them sitting directly on the Riverwalk brick path. The city's Washington Street streetscape work made that corridor genuinely walkable in the process, and downtown's parking garages remain free, which means there's no added cost to treating those two blocks as their own destination rather than a detour on the way to the river.

Why the Cluster Matters When 40,000 People Show Up

Here's the actual shift. Fair weekend used to force a binary choice: brave the brick path and the crowd that comes with it, or skip downtown entirely. The new restaurant density on Washington and Jefferson creates a third option that didn't really exist a year ago. You can park in a free garage, eat at The George or grab dessert from Le Macaron, and only step onto the Riverwalk itself when and where you choose, instead of the fair choosing for you.

That's a meaningful change for anyone who lives close enough to treat the Riverwalk as a regular walk rather than an occasional destination. The fair isn't smaller this year and the brick path isn't any wider. What's different is that the block behind it finally has enough going on to make staying downtown worth the trade-off.

A Simple Way to Use Both

If you're planning to do the fair this year instead of avoiding it, the sequence that makes the most sense given the geography looks something like this:

1. Eat first, on Washington or Jefferson, before the dinner rush collides with fair traffic.
2. Walk into the Riverwalk with a specific stop in mind, whether that's a booth near Fredenhagen Park or the carillon at Moser Tower, rather than trying to see all of it.
3. Save dessert or a nightcap for after the crowd has thinned, back on the same two blocks where you started.

It's a small adjustment, but it's the kind of adjustment that only makes sense once you know both halves of the story: the fair's actual footprint and the restaurant row that grew up to meet it this year.

A Neighborhood Catching Up to Its Own Foot Traffic

Forty years of the same festival on the same brick path built a pretty reasonable local habit of ducking out. What's worth noticing now is that the neighborhood spent this year building the thing that made ducking out unnecessary. A steakhouse moving into a 21-year-old seafood space, a tavern naming a burger after a two-decade mayor, a French patisserie and a third-floor tavern concept all landing within blocks of each other. None of that happened because of the fair. It just happens to change how the fair feels this year.

Sandy Hunter Homes pays attention to shifts like this because they're what actually make a neighborhood worth walking through, not just worth pricing. If you've ever been curious what a downtown Naperville address is worth in a season like this one, Sandy Hunter Homes offers a free instant home valuation whenever you want a real number to go with the routine.