Stand on the Moser Family Covered Bridge some afternoon this month and you can watch it happen in real time: a backhoe swinging earth around a cofferdam, crews moving supplies along a stretch of riverbank that spent more than a decade as the kind of lot people learn to stop noticing. It sits on the east side of Washington Street, across the water from Fredenhagen Park, next to the retro Burger King still known for its Home of the Whopper signage. For thirteen years it was mostly empty. Now it isn't.
The city's name for the project is North Central College Riverwalk Park, and if you have walked, biked, or kayaked past the site since late May, you already know something is under construction there. What most residents don't know is why it took until 2026 to build something everyone had already agreed on since 2015. The answer isn't neglect. It's sequencing, and once you see the order these Riverwalk projects actually happen in, you'll read the next few months of construction fencing along Washington Street differently.
The Site Everyone Agreed On, But Nobody Built
North Central College bought the 0.4-acre triangular parcel at 430 S. Washington St. in 2012, then worked with the city to tear down the vacant commercial strip that had occupied it. Residents who remember standing across the street to watch the demolition in January 2013 called the old building an eyesore, and the site has shown up in Positively Naperville's coverage as exactly that ever since.
By 2015, the city and the college had a formal agreement to turn the parcel into public space. Five years later, in 2020, the Naperville Riverwalk Commission adopted the Riverwalk 2031 Master Plan and the City Council approved it, folding the 430 S. Washington site into a citywide plan to refresh the Riverwalk ahead of its 50th anniversary and Naperville's bicentennial, both landing in 2031. In 2022, the college got the city's sign-off to erect an archway on the property. On paper, this was a project with a plan, a partner, and a green light.
It still didn't move. Here's the timeline compressed:
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2012 | North Central College acquires the site, old commercial building removed |
| 2015 | City and college sign the agreement that sets the project in motion |
| 2020 | Riverwalk 2031 Master Plan adopted, folding the site into a citywide plan |
| 2022 | College receives approval for an archway sign on the property |
| 2023 | Washington Street Bridge Replacement Project begins, park work deprioritized |
| 2024 | Bridge project completes, park planning resumes |
| 2026 | Construction begins May 25, targeting an end-of-October opening |
Why It Had to Wait for the Bridge
The gap between 2022 and 2026 is where the real story sits. In 2023, the city started the Washington Street Bridge Replacement Project, the span that crosses the DuPage River right next to this same parcel. According to the city's own project records, work on the Riverwalk park was deliberately deprioritized so the bridge could finish first. The new bridge opened to all lanes of traffic last summer, and only then did planning on the park pick back up.
That sequencing matters if you're trying to make sense of the Riverwalk 2031 Master Plan as a whole. This park is one of roughly a dozen projects under that plan, and the order they happen in isn't dictated by whichever one was announced first. It's dictated by what has to physically finish before the next thing can be built on top of it, literally, in this case, since the park's low-flow walkway ties directly into the bridge it sits beside. If you've wondered why some Riverwalk improvements seem to leapfrog others that were announced earlier, this is your answer: infrastructure sequencing, not a stalled commitment.
What Groundbreaking Actually Looked Like
The city council awarded the construction contract on May 19, 2026, after receiving five competing bids, a number city engineer Andy Hynes called unusual for a project this size. Baumgartner Construction won with a bid just over $2 million, which Hynes said came in about half a million dollars under the city's budget for the work. The project's total estimated cost is $2.1 million, with $1.3 million coming from a state grant and the remainder from the city's Capital Project Fund.
Crews broke ground the week of May 25, working generally from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Saturday, with occasional lane closures on Washington Street. Hynes described the intent behind the design in a June statement:
"This park will provide a new gateway for the college as well as extend the low-flow walkway from the recently completed Washington Street Bridge to the Moser Covered Bridge. It will also feature an accessible ramp between the river and street level."
What's Actually Going In
The finished park will be small, about the size of a large residential lot, but it closes a real gap in a system residents already use daily. According to city and college planning documents, it will include:
- An illuminated archway sign marking the college's entrance from Washington Street, with the city funding the foundation and electrical service and North Central covering the decorative elements
- Two plazas featuring plaques that highlight the college's academic and athletic history
- ADA-compliant, barrier-free paths and ramps connecting street level down to the river
- Seat walls and benches along the new walkway
- Native landscaping along the riverbank
Once finished, the park connects the Washington Street Bridge to the Moser Covered Bridge, which means residents will finally be able to walk a continuous path from Fredenhagen Park, across the river, past the college's edge, without detouring up to street level. The illuminated Washington Street sign already installed under the bridge is there partly for boaters, a detail Positively Naperville flagged after photographing two kayakers passing beneath it on the river in early August.
The Part Most Residents Haven't Clocked Yet
Here's the detail that changes how you should think about this fall. City officials have said they hope to begin the South Extension Project this same fall, the piece of the Riverwalk 2031 plan that will extend the path from Hillside Road to Martin Avenue and provide a walking connection to the Endeavor Health Edward Hospital campus. That means the tail end of the North Central College Riverwalk Park's construction and the start of the next project on the list are likely to overlap, not hand off cleanly.
If you're picturing this stretch of the Riverwalk finally quieting down once the archway sign goes up in October, plan on one more season of orange fencing instead. The upside is a longer one: once both projects are done, Naperville will have a walking route stitching together downtown, the college campus, and the hospital corridor in a way the Riverwalk has never quite managed before.
For anyone who treats the Riverwalk as part of a daily routine, whether that's a lunchtime walk from a downtown office, a weekend kayak launch, or the annual ritual of finding a spot for Naper Nights or Last Fling, this fall is worth watching. The corner by the bridge that sat empty for thirteen years is finally explaining itself, and it's telling you something true about how this particular stretch of Naperville actually gets built: one finished piece of infrastructure at a time, in an order that makes sense once you know what came before it.
If you're curious how projects like this one shape the neighborhoods around downtown Naperville, or what a stretch of riverfront like this can mean for the homes near it, Jill Clark is a good person to ask. Request a Private Consultation to talk through what's changing along the Riverwalk corridor and what it might mean for you.
