Drive down First Avenue past the roller dam and you will pass a red brick building with plywood over half its windows and a construction fence around the parking lot. It has looked that way since late 2023. Meanwhile, two blocks over on 2nd Avenue and 7th Street, Iowa River Landing has quietly added two new places to eat this year, both open, both busy, neither one anywhere near the river.
That gap says something about how this district actually grows. The small storefronts fill in fast. The building that used to be the reason people drove to Coralville in the first place is taking three times as long to reopen as either of them took to build.
What's already open
Crisp & Green opened on January 30, 2026, at 801 E. 2nd Ave., a fast-casual salad and grain bowl concept out of Minnesota. It was the chain's 50th location nationwide and only its second in Iowa, after West Des Moines. The Coralville shop is run by franchise operator M3 Holdings, the same group that also owns Planet Fitness locations in the area, and the brand's president told local press the opening reflected growing demand in Coralville for what he called wellness-forward dining.
The Eat Shop followed in May. The Solon-based bakery, known locally for its cinnamon rolls and pecan rolls since it opened its original counter-service shop there in 2021, opened its fifth location at 104 E. 7th St. on May 9, with a ribbon-cutting three days later hosted by Greater Iowa City, Inc. At roughly 80 seats, it is the biggest Eat Shop yet, nearly double the size of its Marion flagship, with chandeliers, a long counter, and a small patio on the building's west side. Owner Cheryl Maloney told The Gazette she expects Coralville to become the company's hub, the place where she spends most of her working hours, since it has the room the earlier locations didn't.
Here's how the two stack up against each other:
| Business | Opened | Address | What's notable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crisp & Green | Jan. 30, 2026 | 801 E. 2nd Ave., Ste. 108 | 50th location nationwide, 2nd in Iowa |
| The Eat Shop | May 9, 2026 | 104 E. 7th St. | Largest of the bakery's five locations, about 80 seats |
Both took roughly six months from public announcement to open doors. Both are franchise or chain-adjacent concepts built for turnkey retail space. Neither required anyone to touch a historic structure.
The building that's still waiting
The Iowa River Power building is a different kind of project entirely. It operated as a power plant in the early 1900s before Al Johnson and Dave Koenig converted it into the Iowa River Power Restaurant in 1977, a steak-and-seafood spot with river views that ran for 46 years until owner Danise Petsel received an unexpected eviction notice from the building's then-owner in November 2023. Flannigan's, the Irish pub that shared the building, had already closed the year before.
The building sat vacant for almost a year before Mark Kaufman, a University of Iowa alum and founder of Athletico Physical Therapy, bought it in September 2024 for roughly $3 million through his company, Old Gold LLC. Kaufman told the university's alumni magazine he'd been driving past the building repeatedly while helping his parents move to Coralville and couldn't stop thinking about it.
"I'm committed to doing it right, and making the building what it wants to be."
That commitment comes with real constraints. Old Gold is pursuing a National Register of Historic Places listing, which means the renovation has to preserve the original glass storefront and steel structure rather than gut and rebuild. The project also qualified as a grayfield site, drawing $1.3 million from the Iowa Economic Development Authority's redevelopment tax credits, and Coralville's city council approved a 10-year rebate on any property tax revenue above the building's current roughly $86,000 annual bill, starting in 2028. None of that money or paperwork moves at fast-casual speed. As of the most recent construction photos this spring, the windows were still boarded and the restaurant still didn't have a name.
The original announcement in late 2024 pointed to a late-summer 2026 opening. By the time the University of Iowa profiled Kaufman last year, that had already softened to fall. Late summer is right now, which means the project's own timeline is arriving with the restaurant still unnamed and the fence still up.
Why the slow one is the one to watch
It's tempting to read the boarded windows as a stalled project. The more accurate read, based on how Coralville's own planning documents describe the area, is that the building was never supposed to move at retail speed. Greater Iowa City Inc.'s Strategic Investment Districts work, which predates Kaufman's purchase, mapped out the Fifth Street corridor as a gradual transition zone: single-family neighborhoods to the west, mixed-use development to the east, with the Iowa River Power building sitting at the point where that transition culminates. It was always meant to be the anchor, not the starter tenant.
That's a useful distinction if you live nearby and have been wondering whether Iowa River Landing's growth is real or just churn. Crisp & Green and The Eat Shop prove the retail spaces along 2nd Avenue and 7th Street lease up quickly, which says something about foot traffic and rent levels in that stretch. But the building that would actually change how people think about the riverfront side of the district, the one with the historic tax credits and the National Register application and the $1.3 million in state redevelopment money, is still working through a process built for preservation, not speed. When it does open, expect it to matter more to the neighborhood's identity than either of the two spots that beat it to the punch by half a year.
What this means if you're here this fall
If you live in Coralville and want to actually eat something new before the leaves turn, Crisp & Green and The Eat Shop are both open now and take walk-ins. If you're the kind of resident who's been watching the fence around the old Iowa River Power building for going on three years, the honest answer is that late summer has arrived and the name still hasn't. Keep an eye on Old Gold LLC's local announcements rather than guessing. Given the pace so far, an opening date will likely get real lead time once the historic sign-offs clear.
Either way, the district is filling in from two directions at once, fast on the retail edges and slow at the historic center, and that's a more accurate way to think about what's actually changing here than a simple count of new storefronts.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property values or timing near Iowa River Landing, that's a longer conversation. Emily Hammes works this part of the Coralville market regularly and can walk you through what's actually moving and why. Schedule a consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
