Camp Bar Opened On The Riverfront. The Cedarburg Detour Is A Half-Mile South.

Friday nights on the north end of Washington Avenue look different than they did a year ago. Walk past the covered bridge toward Cedar Creek and you'll find a patio full of red Adirondack chairs, a fire pit throwing light onto the water, and a line for pizza slices from Flour Child. This is Camp Bar Cedarburg, and it opened its doors over Memorial Day weekend in a building most longtime residents still think of by its old name.

If you've been avoiding downtown because you heard something about construction, you're thinking of the wrong stretch of road. The two biggest additions to Cedarburg's dining and drinking scene this year sit right in the historic core, nowhere near the work zone. The project that's actually reshaping how people get around town is a half-mile south, and it's been running since spring.

Two New Reasons To Be On Washington Avenue After Dark

Camp Bar took over the riverfront property at W63N664 Washington Avenue, a 2,000-square-foot cream city brick building that spent its last chapter as Art of Joy Social House and Mercantile before closing in December 2025. Owner Paul Hackbarth, whose company also runs Camp Bar locations in Shorewood, Wauwatosa, the Third Ward, and outside Fiserv Forum, made Cedarburg his fifth. The renovation kept the bones of the historic building but expanded the bar, added oak finishes throughout, and built out an upstairs addition with a stone fireplace and a second bar for private events. Outside, a vintage-style camper serves as an outdoor bar alongside a pergola seating area and a riverside patio with fire pits. Hackbarth has described the appeal of that kind of setup in terms that fit the brand exactly: the feeling of an Adirondack chair digging into the gravel and a fire going while you sit with friends.

A few doors down, Union House Cedarburg has been building its own following with a tapas menu built around shareable plates, seasonal ingredients, and a cocktail list that changes as often as the food. It's family-run, and the Pesto Steak Crostini and Whipped Feta show up in nearly every review. Managing partner Chris Homayouni has said the goal from day one was to create something that feels a little unexpected for Cedarburg, and the tapas format, more suited to lingering over several small plates than rushing through a single entree, delivers on that.

Together, the two spots give downtown a stretch of Washington Avenue where you can start with cocktails and small plates at Union House and end the night at Camp Bar's fire pits, all on foot, all within the same few blocks that have anchored Cedarburg's Main Street feel for generations.

The Reconstruction Project Neither Business Has To Worry About

Here's the part that surprises people who haven't been following the local news closely. The city's South Washington Avenue Reconstruction Project, running from north of Lincoln Boulevard to south of Pioneer Road, is a full rebuild of the roadway, water mains, sewers, and traffic signals along the southern approach into town. It started in the spring and the city has been sending weekly construction updates ever since, with a target completion date of November 6, though officials have said they're hoping to wrap up sooner.

That stretch of Washington Avenue is well south of the bridge, the historic downtown blocks, and both new bars and restaurants. If you live north of the construction zone or you're coming in from Grafton or Highway 60, you won't see any of it. If you're coming from the south, from Mequon or the WI-57 corridor, you'll hit lane flips and an elevation change where the two travel lanes meet at Pioneer Road and Lincoln Boulevard, and it's worth planning a few extra minutes.

Longtime residents have mixed feelings about the timing. One neighbor living just blocks from the work zone said he welcomes the resurfacing and utility upgrades but wondered aloud what it means for festival traffic this fall. The city's position is that full road closures will be rare and short when they happen, and that local access to businesses and driveways stays a priority throughout.

Here's a quick way to think about it depending on where you're starting from:

The Festival Already Told You What To Expect

The Cedarburg Wine and Harvest Festival returns September 19 and 20 this year, marking more than 50 years as one of the region's fall traditions. It's still free to attend, still centered on Arts of the Avenue with artisans lining both sides of Washington Avenue, and still pouring wine from Cedar Creek Winery alongside a lineup of live music on multiple stages. The Giant Pumpkin Charity Regatta, where hollowed-out pumpkins race down Cedar Creek piloted by paddlers, remains one of the weekend's more memorable sights.

What's new is that the festival's own event page is warning attendees directly: portions of Washington Avenue are under construction, and that will trigger major rerouting and may limit local street parking. That's not a rumor secondhand from a neighbor. It's the organization running the event telling you to plan differently than you did last year.

The reason this matters even though the festival happens entirely inside the unaffected core is that the roads feeding into that core from the south are the ones under construction. Street parking that normally spills a few blocks south toward Pioneer Road may simply not be there this year. Walking distance from the new municipal lots, or parking on the north side of downtown near Cedar Creek Park, is going to matter more than usual.

How To Actually Plan Around It

If your Friday routine now includes a stop at Camp Bar or Union House, the construction genuinely won't touch your evening. Both sit north of the work zone, both are walkable from the same handful of downtown parking areas, and neither business has reported any access issues tied to the project.

Where it's worth adjusting is the festival weekend itself. Coming from the south, give yourself extra time, expect the lane flip near Pioneer and Lincoln, and consider parking on the north side of downtown near the creek rather than counting on street spots closer to the construction zone. If the city hits its hoped-for early finish, some of this may resolve before the leaves are even off the trees, but as of late August the work was still active and the completion date on record remained November 6.

None of this changes what's actually pulling people downtown this year. A new bar with its feet practically in Cedar Creek, a tapas spot that's found its own following, and a festival that's been running for half a century are all still exactly where they've always been. The only thing that moved is which road gets you there.

Whether you're already living the Cedarburg routine or just starting to think about what a move to the North Shore could look like, having someone who tracks these details, the openings, the road projects, the festival logistics, makes the difference between guessing and knowing. If you're curious what your own Cedarburg-area home might be worth in a market shaped by exactly this kind of local change, Elissa Berkoff would love to connect. Let's connect, get your instant home valuation, and talk about what's next.