Walk the Loop the Locks trail from Memorial Park toward Treaty Park on a Saturday morning and you'll hit East Maes Avenue at almost the exact halfway point. For years, that's where the walk ended in spirit even if the pavement kept going. The shops along East Maes Avenue included a Caribou Coffee for a warm drink, but no sweet stop to make crossing the road feel like part of the walk.
That changed this spring. A dessert shop, not a park upgrade or a village grant, is the thing that finally gave the trail's midpoint a reason to exist on its own terms.
The Trail Was Already Built
None of this required new infrastructure. The Village of Kimberly's paved trail through Treaty Park already connected to Memorial Park and tied into the broader Loop the Locks network, the kind of multi-use path that gets used for dog walks, stroller laps, and after-dinner exercise regardless of what's happening around it. Treaty Park itself carries a decent amount of built-in reason to visit on its own: an accessible playground, a gazebo with Adirondack chairs, open green space along the water, and in winter, an ice-skating rink at the park's northern tip.
What the park didn't have, and what the surrounding stretch of East Maes Avenue didn't have either, was a food or drink destination that made the walk feel like it was going somewhere rather than just around something. Caribou Coffee at 800 East Maes handled coffee. Past that, options thinned out fast for anyone looking for a treat at the end of a walk rather than a meal.
What Was Missing at the Turnaround
The person who identified that gap wasn't a village planner. It was Chloe Schumann, general manager of Doughlicious, the edible cookie dough and ice cream shop that had spent about seven years running out of a storefront on West College Avenue in downtown Appleton. By late 2025, the location wasn't working anymore. Downtown Appleton's evolution had made it harder to load the company's food truck, which Schumann has said is the business's biggest source of revenue, because alley access and parking spots weren't reliably available. Customers were telling her something similar from the other direction.
"We've been communicating with a lot of our customers lately. More and more people are telling us how much they hate coming downtown."
So the family business looked outward, and Kimberly came up for a specific reason that had nothing to do with rent prices or foot traffic studies. Schumann put it plainly when she described what she'd found in the area around Maes Avenue.
"There's just really nothing around here."
The New Endpoint
Doughlicious signed on for a storefront at 870 East Maes Avenue, next to Antique Up, in a space that had cycled through a Subway and then a martial arts gym before sitting vacant. The family gutted it. Working through the Village of Kimberly's approval process took longer than Schumann expected, since, as she put it, the village has to approve everything that happens within its borders, but the shop opened for a grand weekend on March 27, 2026, with a 1950s soda shop theme, buy-one-get-one scoops, and giveaways running through the following days.
The shop now sits at almost the exact point where the Loop the Locks trail crosses East Maes Avenue, close enough to Treaty Park that finishing a lap and grabbing a cookie dough sampler doesn't require a detour. That's the part that matters more than the opening weekend theme or the retro branding. A destination business at the trail's midpoint turns a there-and-back walk into a walk with a payoff, and that changes who takes it and when.
The Loop Runs Past More Than the Trail
The riverfront section around Treaty Park carries more built history than a first walk-through suggests. The Cedars Historic Overlook, a rental space at 150 Papermill Run, sits along the same stretch, with an indoor area that seats up to 24 guests, a countertop with a sink and beverage fridge, and outdoor picnic seating that extends into the warmer months. Resident rental runs $75 plus tax, non-resident $150 plus tax, with a $300 security deposit, numbers that put it well within reach for a family gathering or a small community meeting rather than positioning it as an event-industry venue.
The building's name isn't decorative. The whole area used to be the site of a paper mill, and the village's redevelopment plan for what's now called The Cedars has been explicit about keeping that history visible rather than paving over it. Riverfront residential has followed since, with Blue at the Trail bringing 45 owner-occupied condominium units along more than 2,100 feet of Fox River frontage and 11 acres of shared greenspace, construction on that project having started in 2024. The Current of the Fox added its Oasis, Ebb, and Flow buildings nearby, and the Roots apartment community across from Treaty Park brought 224 more units into the same half-mile radius. None of that housing is why the trail matters day to day, but it explains why the village kept investing in the park infrastructure that makes the loop worth walking in the first place.
Two Fixed Points on the Fall Calendar
Treaty Park doesn't sit empty between big renovations. The Kimberly Recreation Association uses it for a Touch a Truck event each summer and for a Fall Craft Fair that's become one of the more reliable stops on the village's autumn calendar. Between the craft fair in the fall and the ice rink that takes over the park's northern tip once temperatures drop, the loop keeps a reason to show up across seasons rather than just during the stretch when Paperfest and summer concerts draw crowds to Sunset Park a few blocks away.
That's the piece easy to miss if you're only thinking about Kimberly in terms of its bigger annual events. The park doesn't need a festival to justify a visit. It has a rec association calendar, a warming house in winter, and now a dessert shop within walking distance that gives a Tuesday evening walk the same kind of destination logic that used to require waiting for July.
The Loop Finally Loops
None of the individual pieces here are new by themselves. The trail existed. Treaty Park existed. The Cedars Historic Overlook existed. What's changed is that a family business chose this specific stretch of East Maes Avenue because the gap it filled was obvious to someone who'd spent years watching customers avoid a crowded downtown for exactly the kind of quiet, walkable setting Kimberly already had. The result isn't a new attraction so much as a completed one, a half-mile loop that finally gives people a reason to walk the whole thing instead of turning around at the road.
If you're watching how a place like Kimberly grows into itself, block by block, this is worth paying attention to. CENTURY 21 Ace Realty keeps an eye on these small shifts across the Fox Cities, the kind that don't show up in a listing but change how a neighborhood actually gets used. Reach out if you'd like a closer look at what's happening on the ground here.
