Downtown Mount Vernon’s New Storefronts Bet on Foot Traffic. The Riverwalk Explains Why.

"Fat Buns forever," Peter Kim told Skagit Valley Herald in February. "We're never leaving this place."

Kim wasn't talking about a lease he'd signed under pressure. He'd just opened Fat Buns Café on First Street in downtown Mount Vernon the previous December, and five months in, the reviews were already stacking up: five stars from 55 ratings on Google, most of them mentioning the sandwiches and the fries. Kim, who lives in Everett and had never spent much time in Mount Vernon before scouting the space, said he found the area beautiful and the people kind. He also picked a location that put him three doors down from a Korean barbecue place, next to zero drive-through lanes, on a street built for people who arrive on foot.

That detail matters more than it sounds like it should, because 2026 is the year driving into downtown Mount Vernon from the west side of the river got measurably harder, and the newest businesses on First Street didn't seem to be planning around drivers at all.

Three storefronts, one street, about twenty months

Kim's café wasn't an outlier. It was the third meaningful storefront opening on or near First Street in about twenty months.

• Union Block Bistro opened in December 2024 at 614 S. 1st St., inside a historic building. Owner Herr had spent 30 years running restaurants and a catering business in the Seattle area before selling both in 2020 and relocating to Mount Vernon, where she eventually bought the space. The bistro runs Thursday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Fat Buns Café opened in mid-December 2025, serving bao buns, galbi fries, and espresso, with coffee sourced from Dorothea Coffee, a micro-roastery also based in downtown Mount Vernon.
• Mel & Mia's was reported as the newest business on First Street as of mid-August 2026. The concept first launched in Edmonds back in 2016 before making the move north.

Three owners, three different backgrounds, three bets placed on the same four or five blocks. None of them needed a parking lot to make the pitch work. What they needed was people already walking past.

The bridge that used to make driving the easy option

Here's what changed the math on the other side of downtown. The SR 536 Skagit River Bridge, the span most people know as the Division Street Bridge connecting downtown Mount Vernon to West Mount Vernon, is getting its first new coat of paint in 36 years. The Washington State Department of Transportation closed the bridge to eastbound traffic for the length of the project, which began as early as June 11 and is expected to wrap in early 2027, ahead of the next Tulip Festival, since no traffic control is allowed during that event.

The bridge carried about 18,000 vehicles a day in 2024, split almost evenly between the two directions. That means roughly 9,000 daily eastbound trips, the ones headed from West Mount Vernon into downtown, now have to detour north on Avon Allen Road to SR 20 and south on I-5 instead of crossing directly. Westbound traffic still moves across the bridge, just squeezed into a single lane where two used to run. WSDOT set up an ADA-compliant shuttle for pedestrians and cyclists who'd normally walk or bike across, with call buttons posted at both ends.

The span itself has some history behind the inconvenience. Built in 1953 and opened the following year, it's one of six movable bridges left in Washington's state highway system, originally designed to swing open for boat traffic before being fixed in place in 1967. It made the state's Historic Property Inventory in 2011. None of that changes the traffic pattern this fall, but it explains why the state is being this careful about a repaint: the bridge is old enough that "first coat since 1990" is itself the headline.

Betting on foot traffic isn't new here, it's just accelerating

If this were the first time a downtown Mount Vernon business chose proximity to walkers over ease for drivers, it would be a coincidence. It isn't the first time.

District Brewing, a downtown brewery, built its main entrance to open directly onto the Riverwalk. Co-owner Mark Shintaffer has said he was encouraged to open there after watching the crowds the Riverwalk Summer Concert Series drew on the downtown riverfront. He wasn't counting cars in a lot. He was counting people already standing on the trail.

That's the same trail the Mount Vernon Farmers Market runs along every Saturday from mid-May through mid-October, and the same stretch of downtown where Fat Buns, Union Block Bistro, and Mel & Mia's all landed. The pattern isn't that new businesses are ignoring the bridge closure. It's that the newest wave of openings didn't need the bridge in the first place, because the customer base they're chasing was already three blocks away on the Riverwalk, at the market, or walking over from a concert.

What's actually on the calendar this fall

None of this is theoretical for anyone making weekend plans right now. The farmers market keeps running along the riverwalk through mid-October before the seasonal close. And Downtown Mount Vernon's annual Trick-or-Treat is set for Friday, October 30, from 4 to 6 p.m., with a costume contest at the Lincoln Theatre for anyone who wants to make the stop official.

None of these events require a car to reach if you're already downtown. Several of them are the exact reason downtown keeps drawing new tenants who bet on people arriving on two feet instead of four wheels.

The short version

The story downtown Mount Vernon is telling itself this year isn't about a bridge losing a lane. It's about a street that filled in around three new storefronts over about twenty months. Eastbound traffic across the bridge was restricted in 2026, but none of them were counting on that traffic anyway. Fat Buns, Union Block Bistro, and Mel & Mia's all opened facing a sidewalk, not a drive-through, in a downtown where the market, the concerts, and the brewery next door were already doing the work of bringing people close enough to walk in.

For a Saturday downtown this fall, the Mount Vernon Farmers Market runs along the Riverwalk through mid-October, and Fat Buns Café, Union Block Bistro, and Mel & Mia's are all on First Street.

If you're curious about what's changing in this part of Skagit County, or want a straight answer about what a specific block or building is actually like to live near, Christine Rasmussen knows this stretch of Mount Vernon well enough to walk you through it directly. Let's Connect.