"We're proud to partner with Explore Lincoln City to help ensure the Summer Kite Festival continues during construction of their new welcome center," Chinook Winds Casino Resort General Manager Samantha McDonald said when the arrangement was announced this spring. Most residents read that line as a scheduling footnote. It's actually the more useful fact in the whole story.
Because the Fall Kite Festival landing on the beach beside Chinook Winds from September 25 through 27 isn't a one-time substitution while a construction crew finishes up in time for the holidays. It's the second act of an arrangement built to last through the entire build, and that build runs into 2027. If you've been treating D River Wayside's closure as a summer inconvenience you're waiting out, the timeline says otherwise.
What's actually under construction, and for how long
D River State Recreation Site is not a minor beach pullout. It's among Oregon's five most visited state park sites, drawing roughly 1.5 million visits a year, more foot traffic than almost anywhere else on this stretch of coast. That's the reason its closure registers the way it does. It's also the reason the fix isn't a quick patch job.
The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department leased the site to the City of Lincoln City this spring specifically so the city could build a new $6.7 million Welcome Center on the footprint of the old wayside. Groundbreaking happened on May 6, and the aging restroom building came down the very next day. The design and construction team, Bearing Architecture, Bremik Construction, and Understory Landscape Architecture, is rebuilding the parking lot, the beach access, and the restrooms all at once, and OPRD's own timeline puts completion in early 2027.
That's not a fall project. It's a multi-season one, funded through a $2.5 million Oregon Lottery Revenue Bond grant secured with help from State Senator Dick Anderson and Representative David Gomberg, with the remaining cost covered by Explore Lincoln City's transient lodging tax revenue, the tax visitors pay on overnight stays. Gomberg summed up the stakes a few years back, before the money was in place: "D River is really Lincoln City's front porch, and upgrading the Wayside is long overdue." The porch is getting rebuilt. It's just going to take a while to walk on again.
What's actually different if you go down there this week
The wayside isn't fully fenced off, but it isn't what it was either. During construction, a portion of the parking lot stays open with free parking until that section is needed for the next phase of work. One beach access point via stairs remains open as long as the crew can manage it, while the ADA-accessible ramp is closed for the duration. To keep some accessible access available, the city is placing Mobi-mats, the portable rollout paths used on soft sand, at a pedestrian access point south of the property on a seasonal basis. Portable restrooms are on site to cover the gap left by the demolished building.
None of that is a weekend workaround. It's the operating condition of D River Wayside for the next several months, and anyone planning a regular walk, a dog outing, or an evening down at the river mouth should plan around it rather than around a return date that isn't coming this year.
Two 2026 closures, two very different timelines
D River isn't the only disruption locals have driven around this year. The Nelscott Pressure Gravity Main project closed SE High School Drive between Spy Glass Ridge Drive and SE 48th Place from June 11 through August 17, with SE 48th Place itself restricted to local and emergency traffic only for that stretch. It was disruptive while it lasted, and then it ended, on schedule, in mid-August.
| Nelscott Pressure Gravity Main | D River Welcome Center | |
|---|---|---|
| Started | June 11, 2026 | May 6, 2026 (groundbreaking) |
| Ended / expected end | August 17, 2026 | Early 2027 |
| What closed | SE High School Drive; SE 48th Place restricted to local/emergency traffic | Restroom building; ADA ramp; full parking lot; one of two beach access points |
| Workaround while active | Local access maintained via SE 51st St | Stairs access, Mobi-mats south of site, portable restrooms, partial free parking |
Laid side by side, the contrast is the point. One closure was a summer's worth of pipe work with a fixed end date that's already passed. The other is a ground-up rebuild of the town's busiest access point, and it's roughly a third of the way through a run that stretches into next year. Treating them as the same kind of temporary matters if you're the one rerouting your evening walk.
Why Chinook Winds, specifically
The kite festival's move isn't a random substitution either. D River has hosted the event for years precisely because it sits at the center of town with wide, flat sand and easy highway access, the same qualities that make it the busiest single site OPRD manages on this stretch of coast. Chinook Winds Casino Resort has comparable beach frontage a short drive south, and it's the only site nearby that could absorb both the daytime flying and the festival's Friday-night Night Fly, when illuminated kites go up over the beach from 7 to 9 p.m., without asking festivalgoers to find parking somewhere new every visit. A free shuttle is expected to run continuously from around 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. that Friday to move people between wherever they park and the beach.
Explore Lincoln City's executive director, Kim Cooper Findling, made the underlying reason for the partnership explicit when the project was announced: D River is "a community gathering place that has hosted marquee Explore Lincoln City events, including the Kite Festival, for many years," and the goal now is keeping that gathering going somewhere else while the original site gets rebuilt underneath it. That's a partnership built for the whole construction window, not a single festival weekend, which is exactly why it's worth expecting the arrangement to hold for other events the wayside would normally host between now and completion.
The other side of the ledger
None of this is the town standing still. While D River is torn up, Lincoln City is moving ahead on a new seven-acre park in the Taft District, part of the same broader push to add park space and trail connections around town. It's a useful reminder that this construction season isn't a sign of neglect toward the wayside or anywhere else. It's one project among several, and the one at D River simply happens to be the biggest and the most visible, because it's the biggest and most visible piece of public land in town.
What to actually do with this
If you live here, the practical takeaway isn't complicated: stop waiting for D River to snap back to normal this year. Use the stairs access and the free parking that's still available if you're headed that direction, use the Mobi-mats south of the site if you need the accessible route, and expect the Kite Festival's Chinook Winds arrangement to be the model for how the town handles its other beach events at least through early 2027. The front porch is getting rebuilt properly. It's just going to take the winter, and probably most of next year, to walk back through the front door.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property near the wayside, or you're simply curious how a project like this tends to affect values and demand in the surrounding blocks over time, Audra's Coast Homes tracks these local shifts as part of the work we do across Lincoln County. Let's Connect.
