The Old Sacramento Waterfront has always been a hotspot not only for tourists, but for Capital Region residents looking for fun in their own backyard. People planning to stop by the historic district this summer can expect to see some new storefronts coming to the area, as well as the return of a long-time staple: Evangeline’s Costume Mansion, which was forced to close temporarily last year following a fire.

“When I say every fire fighter from Sacramento was down here, I’m not exaggerating. There had to be 40 trucks,” Store Manager Rachel Immel says when remembering the night of the fire. “If our sprinklers hadn’t been activated, this would have been like a block or two lost. Thank goodness it was just a small section of our store.”

Immel says direct fire damage was relatively small, but the mixture of smoke and water from the sprinklers meant the store needed to dispose of virtually all the inventory on the first floor and much of the backstock stored in the basement. Insurance covered the loss of business from the closure and the renovations, but missing the 2025 summer season — some of the store’s busiest days — still hit hard, she says.

“The fire happened in June, and that’s when we started to do our big ordering for the summer, it being a big season for us with the tourists and the baseball games and such,” Immel says. “We had actually just hired a bunch of cashiers for our busy season, some of whom didn’t even get the chance to do their training before we had to close.”

Immel also noted that Halloween 2025 landed on a Friday, which she said normally made the day even busier than normal for the store. Add in various conventions throughout the year, like SacAnime, and the store missed out on a significant amount of business during the closure.

The current plan is for the store’s grand re-opening to take place on the weekend of June 27-28. While finer details are being ironed out, Immel says the store wants to provide swag bags to some of the first customers to arrive, as well as setting up entertainment in the morning and afternoon.

Books in the Paperworks 

Evangeline’s won’t be the only store opening that weekend. June 27 will also see the opening of Wild Sisters Books Company’s second store in The Paperworks Building on Front Street. Owner Claire Bone says she had already been in talks about opening a new location in Old Sacramento when the owner of the historic building reached out.

“I knew Old Sac was going to be our future at some point, so we’ve been looking for the right opportunity for a while,” Bone says. “So when Troy Carlson approached us it was perfect.”

A smaller location than Wild Sisters’ original East Sac store, Bone says the Old Sac shop will forego used books and primarily sell new releases. She says the initial idea was for the new location to offer a taste of what the main location offers, but she is ready to adjust depending on the desires of the customer base.

“When we announced, the volume of people who said, ‘Oh wow, this is closer to my house, this is going to be my home book store,’ was huge,” Bone says. “So we’re kind of floating the idea of doing the more community-driven stuff we do in East Sac over here.”

Some of these community-driven events include the store’s book clubs, children’s reading time and meet-and-greets with authors. Bone says she sees West Sacramento, right across the river from Old Sac, as a community her store can attract.

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. Troy Carlson, the owner of The Paperworks and Stage 9 Entertainment, could not be reached for comment before publishing.

“Troy bought this building sometime last year and knew he wanted to create a unique space,” Bone says. “He really has brought everyone together and sought people out.”

Beer on the river

Visitors to Old Sac will also have a new spot to grab a drink and relax when Der Biergarten opens its new location along the waterfront in July. Owner and CEO Sean Derfield, who also owns the Midtown Der Biergarten, Sean Finnegan’s Pub in Old Sac, and formerly River City Saloon from 2009 to 2023, says one of the most exciting parts of the new location is seeing all the different people who’ll come by.

“There’s always people down here,” Derfield says. “When we opened our first restaurant here, River City Saloon, I would see people from all over the world, like China and Japan, and they’d always have their own stories.”

The business will operate out of part of the old Rio City Cafe, a separate building from the main restaurant previously used by its kitchen, and use space on the boardwalk for seating. Derfield says the process of construction and permitting has been going smoothly and that he expects to open sometime after the 4th of July.

Rio City Cafe stopped operating in August 2024 after the City of Sacramento closed the waterfront dining patio for safety reasons, after closing another outdoor dining section in 2019. The city owns the building and would have been the party responsible for fixing these safety issues but declined to do so. Rio City Cafe’s co-owner, Stephanie Miller, told Comstock’s in 2024 that she never learned why they made that decision. 

While many local residents criticized the city’s closure of Rio City Cafe, which had been open for more than 30 years, the forthcoming opening of the new Der Biergarten location is already generating buzz. “OMG having the Biergarten there will be amazing. I’d be going all the time,” wrote a commenter on a February Reddit post. 

Derfield says he appreciates Sacramento investing in Old Sacramento, seeing it as the city putting its trust in businesses with good reputations.

“When we applied for this, we knew our reputation was great in Midtown and Old Sacramento, so that probably helped us along the way,” Derfield says. “The city has money; they just have to utilize it correctly.”

Investing in a neighborhood

These big openings are part of a larger effort to invest in and revitalize the area as an important economic and cultural part of the city. Scott Ford, deputy director of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, emphasizes the importance of the area.

“Old Sacramento Waterfront is such a unique historic part of our downtown, and of our central city and the broader community,” Scott Ford, deputy director of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, says. “The area attracts approximately 4 million visitors per year.”

The Downtown Sacramento Partnership is a nonprofit property-based district that helps manage and help provide baseline services for a 102-block area which includes the waterfront. Ford says that a big part of revitalizing and improving the area is helping establish partnerships between private businesses and the City of Sacramento.

“The City of Sacramento has made a significant commitment to investment in the Old Sacramento Waterfront,” Ford says. “Old Sacramento Waterfront is uniquely positioned to be a hub of social, cultural and economic vitality right in our central riverfront.”

Ford says the city’s Destination Sacramento project had $40 million planned in investments to improve the riverfront restaurant space, including repairs to the docks and planned improvements to the boards on the various sidewalks sometime in the first quarter of 2027.

When it comes to what the Old Sacramento Waterfront will look like in the future, Bone of Wild Sisters says she’d like to see an area that acts as a representation of what the region as a whole has to offer, with a focus on smaller local businesses.

“The opportunity for Old Sac to be a microcosm of all the cool things that Sacramento has to offer in one spot is really cool,” Bone says.

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