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.”
Masks and accessories on display on the third floor of
Evangaline’s Costume Mansion.(Photo by Jacob Peterson)
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.
The building Der Biergarten will be using for its kitchen, on the
waterfront of the Sacramento River. Owner Sean Derfield said the
process of permitting and construction has gone smoothly so far.
(Photo by Jacob Peterson)
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.
A conceptual drawing of what the Old Sac Der Biergarten will look
like after construction is complete. (Image courtesy of Sean
Derfield)
“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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