The Same Name Keeps Showing Up in Rivertown's Renovation Story

Walk down G Street or W. 2nd Street in downtown Antioch this week and you'll pass at least five buildings that didn't look like this five years ago. A yellow corner building. A red brick pool hall turned something else. A former Masonic hall now used as the Antioch Armory. None of them have a plaque explaining what happened, but they share something in common: the same buyer.

That buyer's name is Joe Martinez, and if you're heading into Rivertown this Saturday for the Boots & BBQ Festival, you're going to be standing in the middle of his work whether you know it or not.

Five Buildings, One Name

Martinez has spent the past several years buying and renovating buildings in downtown Rivertown, one at a time, according to reporting in the Antioch Herald. The pattern, in order:

1. The "J. Ross" building, at the corner of G and W. 3rd Streets, painted yellow.
2. The building on the corner of W. 2nd and I Streets, formerly Blue's Club, now home to Smash Burgers.
3. An old pool hall next door on W. 2nd Street, the red brick building.
4. The old Masonic Hall at W. 3rd and H Streets, across from City Hall, now the Antioch Armory.
5. The Casino Building in Waldie Plaza, near the railroad tracks and the river.

That last one matters more than it sounds like it should. Waldie Plaza is exactly where the Boots & BBQ Festival sets up its bands this Saturday. The building behind the music is one Martinez already turned around.

His stated approach, per his own comments to the Herald, is mixed use: business on the ground floor, apartments above. It's a quiet way to reshape a downtown. No single renovation makes headlines the way a new development would, but five of them, spread across a few blocks over a few years, add up to a different-looking Rivertown than the one longtime residents remember.

The Sixth: Mac's Old House

The most recent addition isn't on that list of five, because it happened after that count was made, and because it's a different kind of building. Mac's Old House had been open for 42 years when it closed in 2025. Martinez and his partner Ron Harrison bought it, and Martinez told the Herald plainly why. "It's iconic," he said. "I knew it was going to be a lot of work but a good investment."

The plan is to keep it recognizable. The menu stays the same. Sherry, who runs Mel's Diner in Antioch, is set to run the kitchen, working from the original recipes with room to add a few of her own. The building needed to be brought up to current code, which is no small project for a space that started as someone's home in 1956 before it became a bar, then a restaurant.

The reopening target was June 2026, exactly one year after the doors closed. If that timeline held, Mac's has already been back open for a few months by the time Boots & BBQ fills Waldie Plaza this weekend, which means the crowd walking between the festival and the farmers market has a genuinely old Rivertown institution to walk into, not just a renovated storefront with a new name on it.

A few blocks away, the same logic is playing out at the water's edge. Sean McCauley, who owns Smith's Landing Seafood Grill near the Antioch Marina, got city approval to add an outdoor patio after what he described as a three-year process to get the permits right. He was targeting a spring 2026 opening. McCauley is also behind Guadalajara Taqueria and Chill Tea & Coffee, part of what he's called the Antioch Waterfront Dining District, a cluster of restaurants built around the same stretch of dock that used to house the old Riverview Lodge.

What Was Already Happening Every Week

None of this renovation activity would make much sense if Rivertown only got foot traffic for festivals. It doesn't. The neighborhood already runs on a weekly rhythm that has nothing to do with any single event:

• Every Sunday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., the Antioch Farmers' Market sets up at I Street and 3rd Street, with 25 family farmers selling seasonal produce alongside community vendors, run by the Pacific Coast Farmers' Market Association together with the Celebrate Antioch Foundation and the City of Antioch.
• Food Truck Thursdays bring six to eight food and dessert trucks, plus a beer and wine truck, to the Antioch Community Center and Water Park parking lot across from Deer Valley High School.
• The first Friday of most months brings a free concert to the Plaza, with food trucks rolling in alongside it.

That's the part a one-time festival visitor misses. The Boots & BBQ crowd sees Rivertown at its loudest. The Sunday regulars, the Thursday food truck line, the people who've been stopping at Smash Burgers on a random Tuesday for two years, that's what actually justified renovating a pool hall and a Masonic hall in the first place. A downtown doesn't get six buildings' worth of investment because of one Saturday a year. It gets that investment because enough people were already showing up on the ordinary days.

This Weekend, Specifically

If you're planning around Boots & BBQ itself, here's what's confirmed. The festival runs Saturday, September 26, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., in historic downtown Rivertown, with bands playing in Waldie Plaza near the waterfront. It's presented by the Celebrate Antioch Foundation, an all-volunteer nonprofit, alongside the Antioch Rotary Club and the City of Antioch.

The Rotary Club of the Delta is running its 6th Annual Cornhole Tournament as part of the day, and there's a separate amateur backyard BBQ cook-off open to anyone who's ever been told by friends and family that their ribs or chicken deserve an audience. Entry is $100 per team or individual. Prizes run Grand Champion at $500 plus a trophy, first place chicken and rib winner at $300, second place at $150, and third at $75, each with a trophy attached.

Beyond the competition, expect live music, a kid zone, line dancing with instruction, artisan vendors, and food from the Rivertown restaurants that are, at this point, part of the same story as the buildings around them.

The Point of Walking Through It

None of this changes what you'd do on a Saturday in Rivertown. You'd still go for the music, the barbecue, the chance to watch strangers compete for bragging rights over ribs. But knowing that the plaza you're standing in was itself a renovation project, and that the restaurant three blocks over reopened this year after four decades under one name, changes what the walk feels like. Rivertown isn't revitalizing in the abstract. It's revitalizing building by building, with one person's name showing up on more of those buildings than you'd expect.

If you're curious about this stretch of Antioch beyond a festival weekend, whether that's understanding what a home near Rivertown actually costs to carry or how financing works for a first purchase in the East Bay, Jose Bermejo is easy to reach and happy to talk it through in English or Spanish. Let's Connect.