Editor’s note: This is an extended version of the story in October/November 2025 Evansville Business.
A long-term vision to reshape Evansville’s riverfront, making it more attractive and interactive for people of all ages, is being refined to ensure it’s ready for construction when funding is available.
That process, according to officials, involves steps such as locating and identifying major utilities, working with flood elevations, studying environmental conditions, and preserving history.
“These efforts enable us to continue coordinating with local, state, and federal regulatory agencies to refine the design so that it can not only be built, but also effectively maintained into the future,” says Brian Wethington, senior associate and landscape architect with Sasaki, the Boston, Massachusetts-based firm hired by the Evansville Regional Economic Partnership to steer the riverfront project. “Over the past several months, our team has continued to advance these technical investigations along with refining the design to ensure that each step forward is grounded in both vision and feasibility.”
Concepts for a new Evansville riverfront first were presented in May 2024. They’ve since been refined, with flooding patterns a consideration. Wethington and Anna Cawrse, principal landscape architect with Sasaki, say their goal is to complete schematic designs by the end of April 2026.
Elements of the reimagined Ohio River shoreline in Downtown Evansville include an expansive playground that would eventually replace Mickey’s Kingdom, water features such as splash pads, sports courts, town houses, restaurant building, and a plaza at Riverside Drive and Main Street where the Four Freedoms Monument would be relocated. The multi-tiered design includes a winding pedestrian path that involves an elevated canopy.
Sasaki officials presented the most recent updates to the design during a Sept. 10 steering committee meeting hosted by E-REP for regional officials. Wethington says the newest tweaks include converting the Main Street Plaza “from a lawn to a flexible paved plaza with large shade trees, expanding opportunities for a larger variety of programming and events.”
The Ohio River’s fluctuations have driven the project’s design from the beginning, Wethington explains, and this year’s major flooding events — in which the National Weather Service logged that 8.74 inches of rain fell in the Evansville area in early April, and the river rose to its highest crest since 1964 — have provided additional data. “By combining extensive historical flood data with the new survey, we have critical information to refine the design to ensure that key structures and programs are set at elevations that either reduce the risk of flooding or align with the current levee height,” Wethington says. “We also created a diagram that shows each flood level and what type of programming makes the most sense in each level.”
Inevitable questions of when and where construction could begin are difficult to answer, according to Sasaki officials, but they describe the completion of schematic designs as a key step. Sasaki and E-REP officials say public and private funding avenues are being pursued by Ashley Diekmann, who E-REP hired in late 2024 as River Vision Advancement Director.
Sasaki and E-REP leaders describe the Ohio River Vision as a 10- to 30-year endeavor. They also note it extends to Mount Vernon and Newburgh, Indiana.
“Much of the sequence will be determined once schematic design is complete,” Wethington says. “We approached the entire project area as a whole because funding, regulatory requirements such as permits with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and overall project sequencing will all play a role in what gets built first. Ideally, improvements along Riverside Drive and in Dress Plaza would move forward together, creating an early and visible impact. That said, there are still several important steps ahead before we can define the first phase with more certainty.”
