Downtown Loveland's Fourth Street corridor has been under construction for nineteen months now. The city broke ground on its Heart Improvement Plan, known locally as HIP Streets, in late February 2025. By December 1, 2025, the single block between Lincoln and Cleveland, the block that sits directly in front of the Rialto Theater, closed to vehicles entirely. It stayed that way for nearly eight months, not reopening until July 24, 2026. The rest of the five-block project is still expected to wrap before the end of this year.
Here's what a resident walking that corridor this fall might assume: the construction scared business away, and now that the barricades are gone, the restaurants are finally trickling back in. That assumption is backward. The businesses didn't wait for the street to reopen. Several of them signed leases and opened their doors while the block in front of them was still torn up, and the biggest bet of all was placed while that block was still closed to every car that might have parked in front of it.
What Actually Closed, and For How Long
"Fourth Street reopened" undersells what this construction meant. The block between Lincoln and Cleveland isn't a random stretch. It's the section directly in front of the Rialto Theater, and by most local accounts it functions as the commercial center of downtown. When that block closed to cars in December 2025, pedestrians could still reach the restaurants and shops, but foot traffic dropped anyway. People who knew the block was torn up simply decided not to come downtown that night.
That closure lasted almost eight months, from December 2025 to July 2026. Add in the months of broader HIP Streets work that had already been underway since February 2025, and downtown Loveland has now spent nineteen months living around some version of this project. This is the first fall the corridor has had without barricades on that specific block since the closure began.
The Businesses That Opened Anyway
What's notable is what happened during those nineteen months, not after them. While the street outside was unusable for parking and often for walking, new restaurants and bars kept signing leases in Loveland.
Driven Steakhouse opened in May 2025, just three months after the city broke ground on HIP Streets, with a fine-dining menu built around dry-aged cuts and a wine list to match. Taste at Night launched that same June as the evening version of the long-running Taste Local Café on Cleveland Avenue, open Thursday through Saturday with cocktails and small plates. And Love Shack, a completely alcohol-free bar and entertainment space, took over the former Bar Lyssa spot on Fourth Street itself, betting on foot traffic to a block that was, at the time, still a construction site.
None of these openings happened because the street was easy to get to. They happened despite it. That's the part a roundup of "new places to eat" usually misses: the timing wasn't a reaction to improved conditions, it was a wager placed before the improvement existed.
The Building That Sat Empty for Twenty Years
The clearest proof of that wager is a building that had done nothing for two decades.
BizWest reported that a 6,720-square-foot building constructed in 1893 sits at 225 E. Fourth Street, directly across from the Rialto Theater. Its last real tenant was a Mr. Neat's formal wear store, and it has sat vacant since 2006. At one point, the city itself considered tearing it down and turning the lot into a pass-through to parking. Instead, on April 2, 2026, the owners of Rio Grande Mexican Restaurants announced they were opening their sixth location there, a new concept called The Rio, with a target date in early 2027.
The timing is the part worth sitting with. That announcement landed while the block outside the building was still closed to vehicles. The street didn't reopen for another three and a half months. Pat McGaughran, the chain's founder, had been eyeing Loveland for years before a partner driving through on the way to Fort Collins got a call from the building's real estate company. The company had mapped out a five-year expansion plan back in 2024 that already included a Loveland location. What changed wasn't the plan. What changed is that a building empty since before most current Loveland residents moved to town finally has a signed tenant, and the signing happened before anyone could park a car in front of the door.
That's a different story than "Loveland is getting more restaurants." It's a building that couldn't attract a tenant through nearly two decades of downtown's ups and downs finding one while the sidewalk in front of it was still a construction easement, not after.
A Second Bet, Off Fourth Street
The pattern isn't confined to the one corridor. A few miles away, at the Marketplace at Centerra, the space that once held Pinocchio's Incredible Italian, and before that a Johnny Carino's, has sat vacant since Pinocchio's was evicted in March 2024. Word started circulating in local Facebook groups and through 5280 Magazine in January 2026 that Savina's Mexican Kitchen, a Colorado brand tracing back to a 1973 restaurant called La Loma, would be taking over the space, with co-owner Mark Brinkerhoff telling 5280 the brand hoped to open there that spring. By March 2026, renovation was visibly underway but moving slowly, and no firm opening date has surfaced since.
Savina's isn't downtown, and it isn't tied to the HIP Streets timeline at all. But it's the same pattern in a different zip code: a space that had been dead for close to two years is drawing new investment right as Loveland's broader dining scene expands, not because the empty building suddenly became more visible, but because the operators betting on it decided the timing was right regardless of what was happening on any one street.
What This Means If You're Deciding Where to Eat This Fall
For a resident who already knows this neighborhood, the practical upshot is simpler than the backstory. The block between Lincoln and Cleveland is open to vehicles again after nearly eight months, and it now includes:
- Love Shack, the alcohol-free bar and entertainment space in the former Bar Lyssa location, for a night out that doesn't involve last call.
- Door 222 and Henry's Pub, both established fixtures along the same stretch of Fourth Street, that operated through the entire construction window and are now back to normal foot traffic.
- The Rio, not open yet, but confirmed for the historic building across from the Rialto, worth watching for an early 2027 debut.
A few blocks over, Taste at Night offers the evening version of Taste Local Café's daytime menu, Thursday through Saturday. And if you're willing to drive toward Centerra, keep an eye on the old Pinocchio's building for Savina's, though the timeline there is still unclear.
None of this required the street project to finish. The full five-block HIP Streets plan is still going, with completion expected before the 2026 holidays. What already happened is that one block came back online, and the businesses that had been quietly building around it for a year and a half are now visible at the same time.
The Actual Takeaway
The easy version of this story is "downtown Loveland got some new restaurants." The version that's actually true is that the restaurants didn't wait for downtown to get easier. They opened, signed leases, and committed to a building empty since before the iPhone existed, all while the block outside was still unusable. The reopening didn't create the momentum. It just made the momentum visible to everyone driving down Fourth Street for the first time in months.
If you've been avoiding downtown because you remember the orange cones, that reason is gone. What's left is a corridor that kept moving even when it looked like nothing was happening, and a building across from the Rialto that finally has somewhere to be.
Melissa Worth covers the towns and neighborhoods across Denver Metro and Northern Colorado where she works with buyers and sellers, including Loveland. If you're curious about what a specific block or building is worth in today's market, or just want to talk through what's changing in a neighborhood you already call home, Let's Connect.
