For most of the last decade, the strip between the Metro-North platform and the Hudson was a corridor you crossed on the way to somewhere else. In August 2026, the corridor is the destination, and the calendar that runs through it has been built for people who live inside a fifteen-minute walk of it, not for weekend visitors driving up from the city.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. The Yonkers Downtown/Waterfront BID has stacked the next six weeks so that the closing Fridays of the concert series feed into a working Saturday cleanup, then a two-week breather, then Riverfest, then the Yonkers Marathon the morning after. If you live here, it is worth planning the stretch as one continuous event rather than five isolated ones.
Two Fridays left, and they aren't interchangeable
The Yonkers Waterfront Live concert series runs from June 5 through August 14, 2026, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Waterfront Amphitheater, located at 71 Water Grant Street. That leaves two dates on the wall calendar: Friday, August 7, and the closing night, Friday, August 14. Admission stays free, and the schedule note that most residents forget is the one about time of day. Sets end at 8:00 p.m., not 10:00. You are not building around a headliner slot.
Closing night is the one to plan for guests. August 14 brings Chanique & D Magma Band with "Viva Carnivale!" — music of the Caribbean, Latin Pop, Reggaeton and Global Afrobeats. The BID has treated the final Friday as a themed capstone for a few seasons now, and it draws a larger crowd than the mid-July dates. If you want a pier-rail spot, arrive closer to 6:00 than 6:30. Bring something to sit on. The amphitheater has fixed seating but the grass slopes fill first.
Saturday, August 8: a working morning on the river
Between the two Fridays sits a Saturday that most residents miss because it isn't advertised as an event. The CURB Blue Team Hudson River Community Day runs Saturday, August 8, 2026, from 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM at 35 Alexander Street. It is a shoreline cleanup and community program, not a festival, and it is a genuinely different way to spend three hours on the same water you will be watching from a concrete tier the following Friday. Families with school-age kids treat it as the last low-key waterfront morning before the September calendar gets crowded.
Where dinner actually happens
The concert schedule reshaped where residents eat on Friday nights, and the geography now matters. The amphitheater sits at the foot of Larkin Plaza, a block from the daylighted Saw Mill River and Van der Donck Park, and directly next to the Yonkers Pier. A ninety-minute set means you have a ninety-minute window on either side of it. Most of the useful options fall inside a five-block radius.
A few anchors worth knowing by name rather than by category:
- The Sea Fire Grill on the Yonkers Pier. The Benjamin Restaurant Group concept occupies the pier building where X20 Xaviars operated for years before it closed. Same Hudson view your parents took visitors to see, different operator, and the raw bar is the reason to book a table rather than a walk-in.
- Zuppa Restaurant, downtown. A long-standing Italian room with a cellar space that can be reserved for private groups; useful when a Friday concert doubles as a birthday.
- Yonkers Brewing Co. on Nepperhan. Ten minutes on foot from the pier, functions as a pre-show holding pattern on concert Fridays and as its own destination on non-concert nights.
- Francey Brady's. Irish pub with a weekly entertainment lineup, better as a post-concert stop than a sit-down dinner, and reliable for a large group that couldn't get a reservation elsewhere.
The pattern to notice: none of these existed in their current form when the original waterfront programming started. The $200 million Larkin Plaza mixed-use development at 49 Main Street brought a 17-story tower with 170 units of studios, one- and two-bedroom apartments along with ground-level retail space, and the full complex added a second tower on top of that. That is several hundred households whose default Friday night now includes a concert they can walk to in flip-flops. The restaurants adjusted to the walk-up demand, not the other way around.
Daytime pairings north of downtown
If the concert is the anchor and dinner is the pivot, the daytime slot is the part most residents underuse. Two options north of downtown are worth pairing with an evening on the pier.
The first is Untermyer Park and Gardens on North Broadway. The Minnie Untermyer Series runs performances on the grounds through the summer, and the History Tour: Beyond the Walled Garden is on the schedule for anyone who has walked the ruin garden a dozen times without knowing what they were looking at. It is a free public garden, and it stays quiet until roughly 4:00 p.m. on Saturdays.
The second is Philipse Manor Hall at 29 Warburton Avenue. It is the oldest standing building in Yonkers, run as a state historic site, and it earns its spot on the calendar the weekend of Riverfest, when its Revolutionary Harvest programming lines up with the festival footprint downtown. If you have out-of-town family visiting on Riverfest weekend, this is the pairing that keeps them out of the sun for an hour without a car trip.
The September handoff
Then the concerts end and the calendar shifts. Riverfest, presented by the Yonkers Downtown BID, is the largest one-day festival in Westchester County, and it takes place on Saturday, September 19, 2026. The scale is different from a Friday concert. Riverfest brings together more than 15,000 people, and in 2025 the festival featured 10 live bands and more than 140 unique food, craft and community vendors, alongside kid-friendly activities including a circus, ninja obstacle course, rides and games. The BID runs it noon to 7:00 p.m. along the Hudson.
The practical read for a resident: parking downtown becomes a real problem by 11:30 a.m., and the pedestrian bridges across the Saw Mill get slow after 2:00. If you live within walking distance, you have an advantage worth using. If you have family driving in, tell them to park at the train station lot before 11:00 and walk the last stretch.
The morning after Riverfest is the part almost no one plans for. The Yonkers Marathon, Half Marathon & 5K returns on September 20, 2026, at 8 AM, rain or shine, starting at the Yonkers Train Station, 1 Larkin Center. Whether or not you are running, the course reshapes Warburton Avenue and the waterfront road grid for most of Sunday morning, and it is easier to know that in advance than to discover it while trying to get to brunch.
A local's calendar, condensed
The dates that matter for the next six weeks, in order:
- Fri, Aug 7 — Waterfront Live at the Amphitheater, 71 Water Grant, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.
- Sat, Aug 8 — CURB Blue Team Hudson River Community Day, 35 Alexander Street, 12:00 to 3:00 p.m.
- Fri, Aug 14 — Waterfront Live closing night, Chanique & D Magma Band, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.
- Sat, Sept 19 — Riverfest along the Hudson, noon to 7:00 p.m.
- Sun, Sept 20 — Yonkers Marathon, Half Marathon & 5K, 8:00 a.m. start at 1 Larkin Center.
None of these are new. What is new is that they now stitch together into a single stretch of programming aimed at people who already live in the surrounding blocks. The concert series ends, the community day fills the Saturday between the two closing Fridays, Riverfest picks up in the third week of September, and the marathon closes the loop the next morning. The BID has treated it as one arc for two seasons in a row, and the neighborhood is finally treating it that way too.
If you are new to the blocks around Getty Square, this is the six-week window that explains why people who bought here five years ago are not selling. If you have been here longer, it is the reason a Friday night no longer requires a plan more elaborate than a jacket and a walk down Main Street.
For questions about the buildings, blocks, or listings that anchor this stretch of the waterfront, HLRE is available. Let's Connect.
