Sixth Street looks busier than it has in years, and almost none of that is happening in new buildings. A former saloon just became a play space for toddlers. A movie house that opened during the Great Depression is finishing its second expansion since 2018. A fabric store that closed its doors is about to become a grocery store. None of it was masterplanned from a single office. It happened one small business owner at a time, and the pattern only becomes visible once you walk the whole block.
The Saloon That Became a Play Hub
Little Bug Play Hub reopened downtown in mid-June after finishing a renovation of the building that used to house the Double J Saloon. Owner Cortney Falappino started the business after moving to Oregon five years ago and finding nowhere to take her kids during the winter months. What began as a solution to her own problem is now a storefront on Sixth Street with a coffee shop built in specifically for parents and caregivers who need somewhere to sit while their kids play.
Falappino doesn't dress it up.
"I don't see myself as a business woman. I'm just a mom who had a dream and made it happen."
She's already planning the next expansion, this one aimed at older kids who've outgrown the current space. That's worth noting on its own. But the more interesting detail is what's sitting on either side of her front door.
Somehow, Redmond Grew a Family Quarter
Little Bug Play Hub shares a wall with Juniper & Sprouts, a secondhand children's clothing shop. It sits directly across the street from Sweet Oasis Sweet Shoppe & Gifts. It's next door to Silvies River Charter School. Nobody zoned this block for families. No city plan called for a cluster of kid-focused retail next to a school. It happened because four separate businesses made four separate decisions that turned out to reinforce each other, and now there's enough density that people who work in the area have started calling it something.
Miles Falappino, who is closely involved with the shop, put a name to it: downtown Redmond's family quarter.
That's the kind of label that only sticks if it's true. A candy shop across the street from a play hub next to a secondhand kids' clothing store next to a school isn't a coincidence at this point, it's a pattern, and it tells you something about how downtown Redmond actually fills its empty storefronts. Nobody is waiting on a master tenant plan. Business owners are reading the block and betting on what's already working next door.
Down the Block, a Different Kind of Second Act
A few blocks up Sixth Street, the Odem Theater Pub just finished a different kind of renovation, and it says something different about how old buildings get reused here.
The building opened as a movie house in 1937, closed decades later, and spent years as a martial arts studio before current owner Ted Eady bought it in 2001. Eady initially ran it as a gift shop before completing a renovation in 2018 that turned it back into a theater, this time with a pub attached. The bar and two original theaters stayed open through this year's remodel, which added two more screens, bringing the total to four. One of the new theaters includes a stage built to host live music and comedy, something the venue never had in its earlier configuration. Eady is still finishing out the largest theater, with balcony seating planned next.
That's a different growth model than the family quarter forming a few blocks south. Little Bug Play Hub grew because independent businesses clustered around a shared audience. The Odem grew because one owner kept reinvesting in a single historic building over nearly two decades, adding capacity in stages rather than all at once. Both are reuse stories. Neither required new construction.
The Fabric Store's Next Life
The clearest sign that this pattern is accelerating, not slowing down, is what's happening at 732 SW 6th Street. That address used to be a JoAnn Fabrics and Crafts store. As of a July 2026 announcement from the City of Redmond, it's about to become a Natural Grocers, a Colorado-based natural and organic foods retailer, with an opening expected in the first quarter of 2027.
The Redmond Urban Renewal Agency approved a forgivable grant of up to $500,000 to help fund the building improvements needed to make that conversion happen. That's public money aimed at a private tenant, and the logic behind it is the same logic running through every other renovation on this list: it's cheaper and faster to reactivate an existing building than to build new retail space from the ground up, and the city has decided it's worth subsidizing that math when the result is a grocery option people will actually use on foot.
Why Buildings Here Don't Stay Empty Long
None of this is new behavior for downtown Redmond, just an unusually visible stretch of it. Occupancy in the district has stayed above 90 percent for three years running, according to figures the Redmond Urban Renewal Agency reported as of mid-December 2025. Chuck Arnold, the agency's manager, described what that number actually means in practice.
"We've been three years of more than 90% occupancy. That means when a business goes out a new one comes in pretty quickly."
That's the mechanism behind everything above. A tight vacancy rate doesn't just mean downtown looks full. It means turnover happens fast enough that the character of a block can shift within a single year, which is exactly what's playing out on Sixth Street right now. The Dry Canyon Community Arts Center, run by the Dry Canyon Arts Association, opened in December 2025 inside the old Housing Works building, another example of an existing structure finding a new identity rather than sitting vacant while someone waited for the right long-term tenant.
What's Next
The city's Urban Renewal agency is also reportedly working on bringing back a downtown ice skating rink as a year-round family entertainment spot, according to reporting from the Redmond Spokesman this month. If it happens, it would slot neatly into the same pattern as everything else here: another draw for families, another reason for the blocks around Silvies River Charter School to keep building on what's already working.
None of this required a single new building. It required people willing to bet on buildings that already existed, positioned in the right spot relative to what their neighbors were doing. Walk Sixth Street now and you can see three distinct identities taking shape within six blocks of each other: a family quarter built around a school, an entertainment anchor built around one owner's patience, and a grocery anchor built around a subsidy that made the math work. None of them were planned together. All three are happening at once.
If you're curious about what else is shifting around Redmond, or you know someone weighing a move to Central Oregon, the team at Ninebark Real Estate keeps a close eye on this kind of block-by-block change because it's the texture that doesn't show up on a listing sheet. And if you're a Redmond homeowner wondering what all this downtown momentum has done to your own home's value, we offer a free, no-pressure home valuation whenever you're ready to look.
