Downtown Conway's Riverwalk Finally Meets Main Street, and the Block Between Them Is Filling In Fast

This past Sunday, food trucks ringed the Town Green on Laurel Street, kids chased balloon animals across the lawn, and a band played somewhere under the oaks while the smell of nine different kitchens drifted toward the river. It was the fourth of five Sunday Fundays this summer, and the last one lands August 23. None of that is unusual anymore. What's unusual is that eighteen months ago, a Sunday like this one couldn't have started at the Green and ended with a walk along the water. The two didn't connect.

They do now, and that single fact is the real story behind a summer's worth of separate-sounding downtown news. The food truck series, the finished Riverwalk extension, the restaurant competition heating up for September, none of these are isolated. They're three pieces of the same six-block loop, and downtown Conway spent about three decades building the physical connection before anyone figured out what to do with it.

Three Decades to Close Six Blocks

The Conway Riverwalk didn't arrive all at once. The first phase went in back in 1993, with additions in 2001 and 2009 stretching the boardwalk along the Waccamaw River a little further each time. For most of that history, the Riverwalk and Main Street were two separate Conway experiences. You could walk the river or you could shop and eat downtown, but getting between the two meant a drive or a walk around, not a stroll.

That changed on February 6, 2025, when the city cut the ribbon on a fourth phase, an 1,150-foot extension that finally carried the boardwalk to 4th Avenue and the SC 905 bridge. The full pathway now runs about 1.2 miles from the confluence of Kingston Lake and the Waccamaw River, and it connects to the downtown business district through a curved, landscaped sidewalk at 4th Avenue. The project cost roughly $2.29 million, part of it from the city's hospitality fund, part of it from a $750,000 state grant that Senator Luke Rankin secured through the State Parks Recreation and Tourism fund.

Mayor Barbara Jo Blain described the original vision at the ribbon cutting: a place where families could walk and gather by the water, where boats could tie up at floating docks, and where people could stroll straight into downtown for dinner and shopping. At the ceremony, she called the finished project one that "highlights our town's rich history, its cultural heritage and incredible natural surroundings."

That's not marketing language from a press release. It's a mayor pointing at a sidewalk that took thirty-two years to finish, because for most of that time, the two halves of downtown Conway simply didn't touch.

The Green Fills the Gap

A finished path is only half the equation. Somebody has to give people a reason to use it, and this summer that job fell to Tommy and Megan Festa, the husband-and-wife team behind The Clever Cleaver food truck. They launched the truck in 2017 and relocated it to Conway in the summer of 2025, and this year they brought a new idea to Conway City Council: a recurring outdoor gathering at the Town Green, five Sunday afternoons of food trucks, live music, and games, co-presented with Lemons and Dough, a Conway-based truck known for its baked goods.

Council approved the series on June 1, 2026. The first Sunday Funday happened two weeks later. That turnaround matters more than it looks. A city that takes months to approve a food truck event doesn't have the same appetite for downtown programming as one that greenlights it and gets it running inside fourteen days. The five dates, June 14, July 12, July 26, August 9, and August 23, run 3 to 8 p.m. at the Town Green, 200 Laurel Street, free to attend.

The location isn't an accident either. The Green sits close enough to the Riverwalk that the two now function as one continuous stretch, not two separate destinations a drive apart. Organizers and city council have both said this summer's five dates are meant as a first chapter, with room to expand the vendor lineup and add programming if turnout holds up.

The Restaurants Sitting Right on the New Route

Walk the finished stretch of boardwalk toward Main Street and you land almost directly at Bonfire Taqueria, 110 Main Street, the restaurant sitting where the old railroad trestle boardwalk meets downtown. Bonfire didn't need the extension to have a following. It won the inaugural Conway Burger Week back in 2022 with a surf-and-turf creation, and its chef, Darren Smith, also owns Rivertown Bistro a few doors down, which took the Best Burger Prize in 2024.

That competition is back for a fifth year, running September 11 through 20, 2026, presented by Conway Downtown Alive. Past lineups have included Hop N Wich at 219 Laurel Street, whose Bikini Bottom Burger topped a crab cake with comeback sauce and onion straws, and Local Market and Deli at 337 Main Street, which built a short rib blend with fried green tomatoes and Creole remoulade. Last year's fourth annual event added a new Patty Whisperer award, voted on by the competing chefs themselves rather than the public, a sign the event has outgrown a simple popularity contest.

Here's what the timeline actually shows when you line it up:

Every row on that list sits within roughly eighteen months of each other, on the same few blocks. That's not five unrelated headlines. That's one corridor getting built out in real time.

Two Different Kinds of Growth Happening at Once

It's worth separating this from the other growth Conway has seen lately. Out along Church Street and Highway 501, the Coastal Centre redevelopment is bringing in HomeGoods, Marshalls, Chipotle, a Walmart Neighborhood Market, and a J Peters Grill and Bar slated to open by the end of 2026. That's real investment, and it will change how people shop in Conway. But it's a highway corridor built for cars, anchored by national chains that could open in almost any growing South Carolina town.

The Main Street and Riverwalk loop is the opposite kind of growth. It's slower, it's locally owned, and it depends on people being willing to park once and walk. Bonfire, Rivertown Bistro, Hop N Wich, The Clever Cleaver, Lemons and Dough, these aren't chains chasing traffic counts. They're the businesses filling in a physical connection the city spent three decades building, and they're doing it on foot traffic that didn't exist as recently as last year.

What This Means If You're Already Here

If you've lived in Conway for a while, you've probably done pieces of this loop without thinking about it as a loop. A walk on the boardwalk. Dinner on Main Street. A Sunday afternoon at the Green when the weather's good. What changed this year is that those pieces now connect without getting back in the car, and the businesses along the route are starting to program around that fact instead of around it happening by accident.

The final Sunday Funday of the summer is August 23. Burger Week runs September 11 through 20. Somewhere in between, the Riverwalk keeps doing what it's done since February 2025, quietly making the six blocks between the water and Main Street feel like one place instead of two.

We've written before about how Conway's historic downtown compares to its newer neighborhoods for anyone weighing where in the city to settle. But even if a move isn't on your mind, it's worth knowing your own town a little better. Coastal Beach Homes keeps close tabs on what's actually changing in Conway and the rest of the Grand Strand, because the small stuff, a finished sidewalk, a food truck series, a burger competition entering its fifth year, is usually the first sign of where a place is headed next. When you're ready to talk about any of it, Jan and Dan are a phone call away. Start Your Coastal Home Search whenever the time feels right.