Drive Main Street on a Saturday afternoon this August and you'll see exactly what you expect: full sidewalk tables outside Watershed Cafe & Bistro, a line at the new market near the elevator, maybe a wine bar you hadn't clocked before. It looks like downtown finally figured itself out. That read is correct, as far as it goes. It's also only a third of the story.
Two other things happened to downtown Oregon City this year that have almost nothing to do with Main Street's foot traffic, and if you've only been paying attention to the storefronts, you missed both of them. One is happening a few blocks downhill, on 23 acres that have been fenced off from the public for over a century. The other happened quietly enough that you could drive right past its old spot and never notice it's gone.
The mill site you've been driving past your whole life
For as long as most current residents have lived here, the old Blue Heron paper mill site has just been there: a chain-link and industrial backdrop between Main Street and the river, closed since 2011 and mostly ignored. That changed on Thursday, May 28, 2026, when the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde broke ground on tumwata village, the first phase of a mixed-use development on the site, with Governor Tina Kotek, Oregon City Mayor Denyse McGriff, and Tribal Council Chair Cheryle Kennedy all standing on what used to be a working paper mill floor.
The Grand Ronde bought the 23-acre property in 2019 after the mill's closure and spent years trying to make progress through the multi-agency Willamette Falls Legacy Project before withdrawing from that partnership in 2022 and pursuing their own plan. What they broke ground on in May is retail and office space, housing, cultural gathering spaces, restaurants, and a riverwalk that will finally put the public within sight of the falls themselves, according to reporting from OPB. Willamette Falls is the second most powerful waterfall in North America by volume, and it has been essentially invisible to residents unless you knew exactly where to stand.
That's the part of downtown expanding toward the river. Nobody's storefront rent changed because of it yet, but the geography of what counts as "downtown" just got bigger, and it happened while most people were watching Main Street instead.
Main Street's actual comeback, block by block
The storefront comeback is real, and it has names attached to it. Busch Furniture has anchored the middle of Main Street since 1885, run by the same family for five generations with a sixth now training in, and owner Nancy Busch has watched the street empty out and refill more than once from her own window. Two doors down, Watershed Cafe & Bistro opened a couple of years ago when owner Tara Wanstall insisted on a Main Street location despite plenty of people telling her it was the wrong bet, according to a KPTV feature on the street's turnaround.
Since then, a wine bar and a tattoo studio have joined the mix, and in March 2026, Oregon City Market opened at 610 Main Street, a locally owned micro-grocer steps from the Municipal Elevator that now carries dairy from Lady Lane Farm alongside a logo built around the camas flower and Douglas fir, both regional references its owners chose on purpose. Mayor McGriff attended the ribbon cutting herself, hosted by the Oregon City Chamber of Commerce, as reported by Bridgetown Bites.
The bigger structural change is the former Clackamas County Courthouse, which closed and sat empty until Level Development NW, led by Seth Henderson, took on its redevelopment: mixed-use housing, retail, structured parking, and an expanded Liberty Plaza, with demolition and abatement running through 2026 and 2027 and construction completion targeted for 2028 at an estimated cost around $27 million, per reporting from the Oregon City Business Alliance. Add in the city's earlier switch to two-way traffic on Main Street, which Busch says was one of the more useful changes for businesses along the corridor, and you get a strip that's cohering in a way it hasn't in years.
The market that packed up and left without telling anyone
Here's the part that catches longtime residents off guard. If you're picturing the Oregon City Farmers Market setting up downtown on a Saturday morning, the way it has in memory for years, update that picture. Its current home is Green Lot 1 at Clackamas Community College, off South Beavercreek Road, a few minutes' drive from Main Street rather than a walk from it. The market runs every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., from May 2 through October 31, according to its own current listing.
That's not a small logistical footnote. It means one of the events people most associate with a lively downtown, the kind of Saturday morning ritual that anchors a neighborhood's sense of itself, isn't downtown anymore. Anyone assuming Main Street activity on a summer Saturday includes farm stands and fresh produce is combining two things that no longer share an address.
Here's the shape of it laid out plainly:
| Where | What's actually there now | Why it's easy to miss |
|---|---|---|
| Main Street corridor | Storefront revival: Busch Furniture, Watershed Cafe & Bistro, Oregon City Market, a wine bar, and courthouse redevelopment underway | This is the part everyone sees, so it's the part everyone assumes is the whole story |
| Former Blue Heron mill site | Tumwata Village groundbreaking, May 2026, first public access to Willamette Falls in over a century | Sits below street level, still fenced off during construction, easy to forget it's changing at all |
| Farmers Market | Relocated to Clackamas Community College Green Lot 1, Saturdays through October 31 | No longer downtown at all, despite being the thing most associated with a downtown Saturday |
What's actually left on the calendar this month
The summer's biggest downtown draws have already happened. The 15th Annual First City Celebration filled Main Street on Saturday, July 25, with live music and vendors running from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and the Oregon City Festival of the Arts, now in its long-running run under the Three Rivers Artist Guild, brought more than 50 art booths and Porchfest performances to the grounds of the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center on August 8 and 9.
What's still ahead:
- Trails End Challenge, Friday, August 21, starting at 8 a.m. at Hillendale City Park
- Oregon City Outdoor Antique Fair, marking its 30th year on Sunday, August 30, from noon to 7 p.m., when Maizee Mae's Antiques and Treasures turns seven blocks of Main Street into an outdoor vintage market with more than 100 vendors
- Oregon City Farmers Market, continuing every Saturday morning through October 31, at Clackamas Community College rather than downtown
The one view that shows you the split
If you want to see the divide in a single glance, the McLoughlin Promenade will do it for you. Built between 1936 and 1939 as a Works Progress Administration project on land donated by pioneer John McLoughlin, the half-mile bluff-top path has been on the National Register of Historic Places since May 2014. Ride the Municipal Elevator up its 130-foot shaft or climb the Grand Staircase past Singer Creek Falls and the Lee Kelly Moontrap sculpture the Rotary Club commissioned in 2011, and from the top you can look down at Main Street's storefronts on one side and out toward the river and the old mill site on the other, all from the same railing.
What you won't see from up there is the farmers market. That's the point. Downtown Oregon City isn't contracting into one tidy story this year. It's stretching in three directions that don't share a sidewalk, and each one is moving on its own schedule.
Why the split is worth noticing
If you live here, this matters less as trivia than as a map update. The Main Street you're watching recover is a genuinely different project than the riverfront finally opening up below it, which is a genuinely different project than a Saturday market that now lives on a community college parking lot. Paying attention to only one of the three means missing two-thirds of what's actually reshaping the place you call home this year.
Tracy Brophy has spent more than two decades tracking exactly this kind of shift across Oregon City and the west metro, the changes that don't show up on a single map but add up to a different neighborhood than the one you moved into. If you're curious how any of this is landing on values in your part of town, or just want a local read on what's coming next, reach out anytime for a conversation.
