The Rice Bowl sat empty for years before anyone strung up new signage at 2607 Beaver Avenue. Neighbors watched the windows go dark, then watched them stay dark through a couple of Fall Festivals, until a fried chicken spot called Basic Bird finally took over the space. It came from the team behind Harbinger on Ingersoll and Little Brother in Windsor Heights, and it's been open long enough now that most Beaverdale regulars don't think of it as new anymore. It's just where you get Korean fried chicken and dumplings on a Friday night.
That's worth remembering this month, because a few blocks down the same street, a different building just went dark, and the neighborhood is having the exact conversation it had about the Rice Bowl space a few years back. When the Beaverdale Fall Festival parade rolls down Beaver Avenue on Saturday, September 19, it will pass both buildings within the same mile. One is proof that empty storefronts here don't stay empty long. The other is still an open question. That contrast, not the festival itself, is the real story in Beaverdale right now.
The Festival Everyone Already Has Marked on the Calendar
You don't need this post to tell you the Fall Festival is happening. You've been to it, probably more than once. But the specifics are worth having straight. The festival runs Friday, September 18 from 5 to 11 p.m. and Saturday, September 19 from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., with live music across four stages each night, more than a dozen food trucks, a vendor market, and a carnival for the kids. Saturday's parade steps off at 10 a.m. at Beaver and Euclid and heads south for a full mile to Allison Avenue, which means it passes nearly every business on the strip, old and new.
The festival's roots go back further than most people realize. What's now a 501(c)3 nonprofit started as sidewalk sales and carnival rides thrown by Beaverdale merchants, run alongside a separate September event at Holy Trinity Church that had its own raffle, carnival, talent show, and road run. The two merged in the late 1970s into one weekend. It moved under the Beaverdale Neighborhood Association in 1991, split off as its own organization in 2000, and became a formal nonprofit in 2020, the same year it had to cancel entirely because of the pandemic. It came back in 2022 and hasn't skipped a year since. If you're driving in rather than walking, parking is tight on neighborhood streets, so plan around it:
- Street parking is available but limited throughout the neighborhood, and organizers recommend carpooling or rideshare
- Good rideshare drop-off points are 2601 Beaver Ave for anyone coming from downtown or the south and west side, and 2926 Beaver Ave for anyone coming from the north or east
- DART Route 5 serves the festival directly for anyone who wants to park at Merle Hay Mall and ride in instead
None of that is the interesting part. The interesting part is what the parade route walks past.
What Filled the Rice Bowl Space
For years, the building at 2607 Beaver Avenue was just the old Rice Bowl, a fixture that had been there for decades before it closed. When Basic Bird moved in, it wasn't a random pick. Joe Tripp, who owns Harbinger on Ingersoll Avenue, had already tested a Korean fried chicken concept as carryover during the pandemic, when Harbinger couldn't seat anyone indoors. Basic Bird became his third full concept, alongside Harbinger and Little Brother in Windsor Heights, and he chose historic Beaverdale specifically for it.
That decision matters more than it looks like on the surface. A chef with three concepts across the metro and options in more visible corridors picked a residential neighborhood strip for his third one. That's a bet on foot traffic that's already there, not foot traffic he'd have to build from scratch. And it paid off. Basic Bird now sits alongside longer-running anchors like Beaver Tap, the neighborhood dive bar at Beaver and Urbandale known for its Wednesday night pool and live music, Le Jardin, the French bistro doing Saturday and Sunday brunch, and Christopher's, where families have marked anniversaries and birthdays for two generations. Flying Mango and Dam Pub round out a strip that doesn't have much retail vacancy left to speak of.
That's the pattern worth noticing: when a building empties out on Beaver Avenue, something fills it, usually something that adds to the strip rather than duplicates what's already there. Which brings us to the building that hasn't finished that process yet.
The Building Nobody's Renting Anymore
Earlier this year, a credit union closed its branch at 2805 Beaver Avenue when its lease expired, relocating to a new site on Merle Hay Road. That left the former bank building and its nearly one-acre lot, sitting across the street from Fareway Meat Market, on the market for just over $1.5 million. In July, a commercial broker held an open house at the site specifically to gather feedback from the Beaverdale Neighborhood Association, the Des Moines West Side Chamber, city economic development contacts, and members of the Urban Land Institute.
One concept floated for the site would tear down the 60 year old former bank and replace it with condos and commercial space. The stated goal isn't just to fill a vacant lot. It's to give longtime Beaverdale residents a way to downsize without leaving the neighborhood they've lived in for decades, while still making room for new businesses on the ground floor.
That detail is the one worth sitting with if you already own here. Beaverdale is a century old neighborhood, and a good share of the people who bought here in the 1980s and 90s are now at the stage of life where a two story colonial with a big yard stops making sense. Up to now, the answer for most of them has been to move somewhere else entirely. A condo concept on Beaver Avenue, walking distance from Basic Bird, Beaver Tap, and the festival route itself, is a different answer: stay in the neighborhood, just in a smaller footprint.
Nothing is finalized. The July open house was a feedback session, not a groundbreaking. But it's the kind of proposal that only gets floated when a neighborhood has demand for it, and Beaverdale clearly does.
What This Means If You Already Live Here
The festival is the loud, visible thing that happens once a year and reminds everyone why they like living in Beaverdale in the first place. The building turnover on the same street is the quieter thing that's actually shaping what the neighborhood looks like five years from now. Both are true at once, and the parade route on September 19 will walk past evidence of both.
If you're already a Beaverdale homeowner, the credit union site is worth watching even if you have no plans to move. A successful condo and commercial project a few blocks from your house tends to support property values across the strip, the same way Basic Bird's arrival gave Beaver Tap and Christopher's more reasons for people to make a night of it rather than a single stop. If you're the kind of longtime resident the condo concept is explicitly aimed at, it's worth knowing the conversation is happening now, while it's still shaped by neighborhood feedback rather than decided by developers alone.
Either way, enjoy the festival this weekend. Get a gyro, watch the parade go by, and take a second look at both buildings it passes. One of them already answered the question of what comes next. The other one is still being written, and the answer will matter to more people in this neighborhood than just whoever ends up living there.
If you want a closer read on what's happening across other corners of Des Moines, our Des Moines neighborhood guide tracks the broader patterns block by block, and our recent look at where the metro's new openings actually landed covers what's shifting in Ingersoll and the East Village this year.
And if this kind of quiet turnover has you wondering what it means for your own Beaverdale property, whether you're thinking about downsizing, adding space, or just want a clearer read on what's happening around you, Erika Hansen is happy to talk it through. Schedule a free consultation whenever it's useful, no festival food required.
