If you already live in Ridgefield, you have probably noticed that summer here is running on two clocks. One clock is downtown, where Pioneer Street still ends at the bluff and the Farmers Market is back at Jesse Lee. The other clock is at the I-5 interchange, where a Grocery Outlet shell went up in January and In-N-Out is aiming for a summer opening in Union Ridge Town Center.

Neither clock is the waterfront. That one is set to a later year, and the gap between what has been announced down there and what is actually under construction is the single most useful thing to understand about this summer in Ridgefield.

Saturday, July 25: SummerFest, Block By Block

SummerFest runs downtown from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the practical change this year is that Bailey Avenue is closed to traffic, which turns a normal cross street into an actual gathering space with treats and live music. If you have been the last few years, that is the new footprint to plan around. Main Street holds the vendor spine, with more than 100 booths, and the Chamber has grouped wellness-focused businesses into a new Wellness District you will run into as you walk south.

A working order of operations for the day, if you want to hit the good stuff before the crowd thickens:

• Start at the Ridgefield Farmers Market at Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church, before the Main Street booths open.
• Walk Main Street north to south, ducking into Pelo by Edgardo and The Candlelight Shoppe for the sidewalk sales the Chamber has organized with downtown merchants.
• Free tours run at the Keeler Tavern Museum. This is the one thing on the SummerFest map most residents keep meaning to do and then never do.
• Land at Lounsbury House for the family programming and Bailey Avenue for the food and music once the sun is high.

If you are hosting anyone from out of town that weekend, this is the day to keep them in Ridgefield rather than driving them anywhere.

The Six Weeks Around It

SummerFest is one Saturday. The reason it matters more than that is because it sits inside a stretch of downtown programming that most residents underuse.

The Ridgefield Farmers Market is running its full season at Davis Park and at Jesse Lee, and First Fridays have become a real weeknight anchor for the downtown blocks between Pioneer and Mill. If you have been treating First Fridays as a nice idea rather than a plan, the difference this summer is that more of the storefronts on Main are staying open into the evening for it. The Big Paddle in early June already used the same footprint. That festival, now in its 15th year on Lake River, opened with Takohachi's taiko drumming at 9 a.m. and ran a seven-piece cover band called Hit Machine through the middle of the day, with Alder Creek Kayak offering half-off rentals to anyone with the code and the Friends of the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge leading two free guided hikes straight off the waterfront.

The flotilla ran 2.5 miles north on Lake River, past the wildlife refuge, to the Columbia and back. Five miles on the water without ever leaving town.

That is the operating range of Ridgefield summer at its best. The town is small enough that a festival, a Refuge trailhead, and a downtown business district are all inside a fifteen-minute walk of each other, and the summer calendar is finally programmed to reflect that.

What Is Actually Opening (And Where)

The other reason your Ridgefield summer feels different is that the tenant mix downtown and out at I-5 is shifting in real time. Here is the shortest useful version, based on permit records and reporting from The Reflector and Clark County Today through spring 2026:

Two things are worth pulling out of that table. First, Legacy Trails on South Royle Road is quietly turning into the second restaurant cluster in town. Two full-service kitchens in the same mixed-use building will change the way people talk about "downtown" versus "east side," because it means you now have a walkable dinner option that is not on Pioneer. Second, the Grocery Outlet timeline is the one to watch. A shell permitted in January with a tenant improvement issued in March is a construction pace that usually resolves inside the same calendar year. If it opens before Rosauers, Ridgefield will get its first genuinely competing grocery footprint before it gets its first traditional supermarket.

For anyone who has driven to Salmon Creek or Battle Ground for groceries out of habit, that habit is probably ending this year.

About The Waterfront

This is the part where the two clocks separate cleanly. If you go to the Port of Ridgefield's page, the vision is real: 40 acres, a 58-room boutique hotel, mixed-use buildings, workforce housing, expanded marina access, and a 9-acre waterfront park along 1,500 feet of shoreline. The Waterfront Park Master Plan has been adopted, with an active zone to the south and a passive zone near the Refuge to the north. Palindrome Communities out of Portland is the development partner. The state legislature put $100,000 toward the passive-zone design earlier this year.

The number that matters for planning your actual summer is this one: Port officials are targeting a late 2027 groundbreaking, and as of the city's April 28 statement, no formal development application has been submitted for council review. The Port CEO has said openly that they are still working through traffic, housing, and environmental questions raised at two spring public meetings, one at Commissioners Coffee on April 21 and the other at City Council on April 23.

So the waterfront you keep hearing about is still, this summer, the same waterfront it was last summer. It is the launch site for Big Paddle. It is the terminus of the Pioneer Street Bridge. It is a beautiful stretch of Lake River with a wildlife refuge on the other side. It is not, yet, the hotel-and-housing district in the renderings. If you have been holding off on walking down there because you think the construction is imminent, walk down there. The one summer left to see it the way it has been is this one, and probably next.

Small Things Worth Knowing

• The Farmers Market season opening at Davis Park is a separate footprint from the Jesse Lee footprint that SummerFest uses. On July 25 you get both.
• Alder Creek Kayak has a rental shop at 5 Mill Street. If your out-of-town guests want to actually get on the water, this is the closest launch, not the boat ramp.
• Clark College is preparing its Boschma Farm campus northeast of I-5 in The Junction. Construction on the first building is expected to begin in the near term. That timeline is worth tracking if you have a high schooler.
• The city expanded its downtown traffic impact fee reduction into the Commercial Neighborhood Business zone this spring, which is one of the quieter reasons the tenant list keeps growing.

After The Weekend

The useful frame for this summer is that Ridgefield is not one downtown. It is a historic downtown that is finally being programmed like a real Main Street, a retail hub near the I-5 interchange that is about to reach critical mass on food and groceries, and a waterfront that has a plan and a park master plan and a partner and a target year, but not a shovel. Once you hold those three in your head at the same time, the July 25 walk feels different, the Legacy Trails openings feel like a bigger deal, and the waterfront feels like something to enjoy this year rather than wait on.

If you are curious what any of this activity is doing to home values in your specific pocket of town, or you have been quietly wondering what your place would list for in a market this active, Brian Jones is glad to give you a straight read. Get your instant home valuation, or reach out for a private conversation about your block.