In mid-April, Jeff and Kelly Rickert stood in Water Street Vintage on West North Water Street and watched the Wolf River come in under their floor. The water didn't crash through a window or knock down a door. It rose from below, soaking the subfloor and the walls until the antique mall's flooring had to come out entirely. Most of the merchandise survived. The floor did not.
Six months later, that same building has a ribbon cutting behind it, a reopened storefront, and a floor that's actually better than the one the river took. That small detail is the whole story of downtown New London this fall. The flood didn't just get cleaned up. It landed in the middle of a downtown that was already changing, and what reopened on the other side isn't a copy of what closed in April. It's a slightly different downtown, and a resident walking those same four blocks today will notice the difference if they know where to look.
The River Did Something It Hadn't Done Since 1979
The numbers matter here because they explain why this spring felt different from every other high-water year locals remember. On April 17, the Wolf River hit 11.93 feet, edging past the previous record of 11.83 feet set in 1979. Officials expected a crest around 12 feet. The river kept rising. By the following weekend it crested at 15.06 feet, more than three feet above the old mark.
Downtown flooded from the river inward. Streets went underwater, the Shawano Street and Pearl Street bridges closed, and about 1,800 people in the New London area were affected. Hundreds of volunteers, including off-duty teachers and students from New London High School, spent days filling sandbags at Hatten Park. The city didn't reopen downtown to the public until April 22, nearly a week after the water started rising.
That's the baseline. Everything that follows is what happened after the barricades came down.
What Was Actually Standing When the Water Left
Not every business took the same hit, and the differences say something about who's downtown and how close they sit to the river.
| Business | What happened | Status now |
|---|---|---|
| Water Street Vintage (207 W. North Water St.) | Floodwater destroyed the flooring under the antique mall | Reopened with a ribbon cutting June 11 |
| Familiar Grounds Coffee | Closed eight days, some product and business lost | Reopened April 24, still hosts Winter Wonderland |
| Freaky Fast Turnaround Print Shop | Cut off from customers for a week to ten days | Back in operation |
| River Edge Salon (Pearl St.) | Water reached the front door of a building that survived 1979 without flooding | Reopened |
| La Costenita Grocery / Taqueria Luciano | More than six feet of water in the basement | Stayed open through recovery, offering discounts on at-risk stock |
| Hilker Warehousing | Held the water out with a hand-built berm and round-the-clock pumping | Never fully closed |
The pattern that stands out is how much of downtown fought the river building by building rather than waiting for a citywide fix. Tim Roberts at Freaky Fast Turnaround put it plainly to a reporter in the middle of the recovery: "We'll come back, we'll bounce back." That wasn't optimism talking. It's roughly what happened.
The Building That Was Already Changing Before the Flood
A block over on Pearl Street, a different kind of transformation has nothing to do with the flood at all, and that's worth knowing if you've walked past 211 S. Pearl and wondered why there's scaffolding and exposed brick on a building that's been a bar for decades.
The Wolf River Pub sits inside a 135-year-old structure built in 1890 for John Schantz. It started life as the Southside Opera House, hosting touring entertainers on an upper level before it became the Kozy Korner restaurant in 1928, then Ebert's Bar in 1946, then John's Bar under the Locy family for more than 45 years. Owner Brenda Fermanich is now stripping off the old sheet metal siding and restoring the original brick, one section at a time, with mason Travis Gordon of True North Masonry doing the work. She landed a $4,000 matching grant from the city's facade improvement program this year and plans to apply again next year to keep going.
Fermanich has her hopes set on what's still hidden. "I hope the front of the building still says Opera House," she told a reporter. That's not a flood recovery story. It's a downtown that was already peeling back its own history before the river gave it a reason to slow down and take stock of everything else.
New Construction on the Same River That Just Broke a Record
Two blocks from Water Street Vintage, S.C. Swiderski held a ribbon cutting on June 9 for a new mid-rise apartment community at 305 W. Wolf River Ave. Complimentary food, raffles, a celebration of what the chamber called a community milestone. It opened eight weeks after floodwater peaked at a spot on the same river the building is named after.
That timing isn't a contradiction so much as a reminder of how downtown New London actually works. Development here has been running on its own schedule for a while, tied to a two-year, $2.9 million downtown streetscape project that replaced water and sewer mains and narrowed roadways for walkability just weeks before the river broke its record. The flood didn't start that momentum and it didn't stop it either. It just happened in the middle.
Sundays Are Still Behind Events Everlasting
If you want a low-key read on whether downtown feels normal again, check the parking area behind Events Everlasting at 509 W. North Water St. on a Sunday morning. The florist and boutique, run by Kim and her husband Steve, has hosted a Sunday farmers market behind the shop all season, with dates running from mid-June through October. The next one lands this weekend, then the season wraps with one final Sunday on October 4.
It's a small thing, a handful of vendor tables from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., but it's exactly the kind of weekly rhythm that either survives a disruption or quietly disappears. This one didn't disappear.
Fall Fest Answered the Bigger Question
The clearest sign that downtown's calendar is back at full strength came on September 12, when Fall Fest returned to Werner Allen Road by Hatten Park. The weekend started Friday night with the Wheels on Werner Allen car and cycle show, nearly 200 classic cars, trucks, and motorcycles lined up along the riverfront. Saturday brought more than 200 vendor booths, a chamber table selling locally made cheese and sausage, and a Kids Fun Zone with bounce houses and face painting.
This is the same event that's grown substantially since it relocated to Hatten Park, expanding from roughly 110 vendors in earlier years to nearly 300 today, according to the chamber. A festival that size doesn't happen in a downtown that's still limping. It happens in one that's back to planning normally.
What's Still Ahead
Winter Wonderland on the Wolf returns Friday, December 4, hosted again by Familiar Grounds Coffee Shop, the same business that reopened eight days after closing in April. Last year's version paired a downtown mural by the Wolf River Art League with a new light installation built by students in the school district's Technical Education Class, a detail the chamber's executive director called a good example of the community working together. There's no reason to expect this year's version will look any smaller.
Between now and then sits one more Sunday farmers market, an ongoing brick-by-brick restoration on Pearl Street, and a downtown that's finished proving it can take a historic flood and still fill Hatten Park with 300 vendors two months later.
None of this required New London to go back to exactly what it was in March. It required Water Street Vintage to install a floor it needed anyway, Wolf River Pub to keep uncovering what was always under the siding, and a handful of business owners to reopen on their own schedule instead of anyone else's. That's a different kind of comeback than a headline about flood damage usually implies, and it's the one actually visible on the ground right now.
If you're weighing a move to New London or anywhere else in the Fox Cities and Northeast Wisconsin, CENTURY 21 Ace Realty knows these neighborhoods block by block, not just by the numbers on a listing sheet. Contact us when you're ready to talk about what's actually happening on the ground.
