For most of its three-decade existence, the Conway Riverwalk was a place you visited, not a place you passed through. You parked near the water, walked the boardwalk, took in the tannin-dark Waccamaw, and drove somewhere else for dinner. Main Street sat two blocks away, but the two halves of downtown never quite touched. That changed in February 2025, and this summer, for the first time, there's a recurring reason to actually use the connection.
The Boardwalk Used to Stop Short of Main Street
Conway broke ground on the Riverwalk in the early 1990s, and the project grew in phases over the following decades, with earlier extensions completed in 2001 and 2009. Each phase added distance along the water. None of them closed the gap to Main Street.
That changed on February 6, 2025, when the city cut the ribbon on a 1,150-foot extension that pushed the boardwalk north from Kingston Lake to 4th Avenue at the Highway 905 bridge. The project cost $2,287,277, funded in part by a $750,000 state grant and the balance from the city's hospitality fund. With the addition, the Riverwalk now runs roughly 1.2 miles of pressure-treated pine boardwalk and connecting sidewalk, and for the first time, it lands directly at the edge of Main Street instead of stopping short of it. Mayor Barbara Jo Blain called it what it was at the ribbon cutting: mission accomplished.
That single architectural fact matters more than it sounds like it should, because it quietly set up everything that's happened downtown since.
A Food Truck Series Picked Up Where the Boardwalk Left Off
Conway has had big annual events on the Town Green for years. Riverfest draws tens of thousands every June. Groovin' on the Green brings a concert series through the warmer months. What downtown hasn't had, until this summer, is something smaller and more frequent, the kind of low-key gathering you can drop into without planning around it.
That gap closed on June 1, 2026, when Conway City Council approved Gathering on the Green: Sunday Fundays, a new outdoor series bringing food trucks, live music, and family activities to the Town Green at 200 Laurel Street. The idea came from Tommy and Megan Festa, owners of The Clever Cleaver, a food truck that relocated to Conway in August 2025 after building a following elsewhere. The first event happened less than two weeks after council approval, on June 14. The Clever Cleaver co-presents alongside Lemons and Dough, a Conway-based truck known for its baked goods, and together they anchor a rotating lineup of up to nine trucks across the season.
The Festas didn't frame this as just another food truck stop. In a post after council approval, Tommy Festa described the goal as building
"connection, energy, family fun, and support for local small businesses."
That's a different register than a once-a-year festival. It's a bet that downtown Conway can support a recurring, walk-up gathering, not just a spectacle.
What's Already Waiting Along the Loop
Here's the part that ties the two stories together. Before the Riverwalk extension reached Main Street, a food truck series at the Town Green would have been an isolated stop. Now it's the middle of a loop.
Park near the water, and you can walk the boardwalk past Bonfire Taqueria, the barbecue and Southern-food spot founded by chef Darren Smith, where the outdoor porch looks straight out over the Waccamaw. Continue toward Main Street and you're a few minutes from Rivertown Bistro's rooftop views, The Trestle Bakery for pastries and sandwiches, and Hop N Wich's sandwich-and-craft-beer lineup. Cut over to Laurel Street and you land at the Town Green itself, where the food trucks set up.
None of these businesses are new. What's new is that a Sunday afternoon downtown no longer requires picking one destination and driving to the next. The infrastructure to walk the whole thing has only existed since last year, and Sunday Fundays is the first recurring event actually built to use it.
One Sunday Left on the 2026 Calendar
The series runs on five Sundays this summer, and four have already happened, on June 14, July 12, July 26, and August 9. One remains:
- Date: Sunday, August 23, 2026
- Time: 3 to 8 p.m.
- Location: Town Green, 200 Laurel Street, Conway
- Cost: Free to attend, pay only for food and drinks
- What to expect: A rotating lineup drawn from the season's roster of nine food trucks, plus live music, lawn games, and balloon animals
City council and the Festas have both said this first summer is meant to be a starting point rather than a finished format. If the turnout holds through the final Sunday, expect the series to come back with a bigger footprint next year.
The River's Edge Isn't Done Changing
The Riverwalk and the Town Green aren't the only things moving along the water this year. In April 2025, Santee Cooper transferred the 808-acre site of its former Grainger Generating Station to the city, and in December 2025, Conway City Council approved a tax increment financing district to help fund what officials are calling a once-in-a-generation build-out of the property: an inland freshwater beach, a 100-slip marina, a 3.5-mile Riverwalk extension, and a mixed-use village of shops and restaurants. One canal on the site was already restored and reopened for boating and fishing in July 2025, the first visible sign of a project City Administrator Adam Emrick has said will take years to fully build.
None of that changes your plans for August 23. But it's worth knowing that the same instinct behind Sunday Fundays, using existing riverfront infrastructure to give people more reasons to show up downtown, is playing out on a much larger scale a short drive from the Town Green.
For now, the smaller version is the one worth your time. Park by the water, walk the boardwalk to Main Street, and see what's cooking at the Green.
If you already call Conway home, none of this requires a real estate conversation. But if a friend or family member has been asking what it's like to actually live near this stretch of the Waccamaw, or you're curious what a home along this changing part of downtown is worth these days, Alexandria Bevier knows this stretch of the Grand Strand well. Let's Connect.
