Standing on High Street in downtown Somersworth, you can hear the Salmon Falls River before you can see it. The water runs behind the mill buildings that line the street, close enough that the sound carries on a quiet morning, far enough that most people who eat or shop downtown have never actually stood beside it. One city councilor said as much at a Planning Board meeting in February, pointing out that to actually see the river from downtown, you have to walk past the mills first. That gap between hearing the river and seeing it has shaped Somersworth planning conversations for more than twenty years. A newly formed committee is trying to close it, and it's starting with the one thing residents can already do this fall: walk the trail that already exists.
The River You Can Hear But Can't See
Somersworth already has a riverwalk. It's been open for years off Buffumsville Road, a 9.8-acre park that traces the Salmon Falls River, and the city's own parks page describes it as a good spot to walk a dog, fish, or catch fall foliage that peaks in September and October, which is exactly the window the city is in right now. None of that is new information to anyone who's already used it.
What the trail doesn't do is connect to downtown. The city's own capital planning documents describe the existing Riverwalk as a single parcel, one that a future connection to the commercial center of downtown would need to bridge before it functions as anything more than an out-of-the-way park. That's the actual gap. The river runs directly behind High Street and Main Street, but reaching it on foot from a downtown storefront means driving to a different address entirely. The sound carries. The access doesn't.
Two Decades of Task Forces, One Recurring Idea
This isn't a new observation. A Main Street-Riverfront Task Force was working through design principles for connecting Main Street to the waterfront as early as 2003, producing planning documents and reading lists that are still archived on the city's website. Twenty-plus years later, the same basic idea, linking downtown to the river behind it, was back on the table at a Planning Board meeting on February 18, 2026, just with different names attached to it.
At that meeting, board members floated several ways to get there. One suggested a European-style plaza and city square built on the site of Somersworth Plaza. Another wanted the vacant Aclara building torn down and replaced with a permanent public gathering space, arguing that residents currently have to walk past the mill buildings just to know the river is there at all. A third pointed to the empty former BP station on High Street as another option, though city staff noted that current zoning no longer permits a gas station downtown, closing off that specific reuse. A fourth suggested a path could run along the railroad side of the businesses that already face the river.
None of that is settled. What it shows is a downtown with more vacant or underused parcels in play at once, Somersworth Plaza, the Aclara site, the old BP station, than most people driving past would guess. It also explains part of why progress has been slow. Somersworth's downtown sits inside a Historic Commercial and Industrial District established in 1987 that covers more than 300 properties, the second largest historic district in the state. Any reuse of a mill building or a plaza site here goes through real preservation review, not a blank slate.
A Committee Built to Prove the Idea, Not Just Plan It
What's different this time is who's been asked to lead it and what they've been told to do first. Mayor Matt Gerding formed a dedicated Riverwalk Committee earlier this year, chaired by Kimberly Shoen, who also sits on the Historic District Commission, along with members Brendan O'Sullivan and Luke Perczak. The committee held its first meeting on March 4, 2026.
The city's stated goal for the group covers familiar ground: extend public access to the riverfront, add greenspace, and link downtown, civic buildings, and residential neighborhoods with pedestrian and bicycle routes running from the Berwick Bridge all the way to Malley Farm. But the committee's actual charge, as posted on the city's Riverwalk Committee page, breaks that goal into a specific sequence. Before anything else, the group is asked to gather the city's past planning efforts into one place the public can actually see, and to test the concept by activating spaces on a trial or event basis so people can experience it before a funding request ever goes to the council.
That ordering matters. The 2003 task force produced design documents first. This committee is structured to let residents use pieces of the idea before the city asks them to pay for the whole thing. It also isn't starting from zero on the ground. City budget updates from late 2025 already show the Department of Public Works working on drainage improvements at the existing riverwalk access point, meaning some of the physical groundwork was underway before the committee held its first meeting.
A few of the committee's early tasks, as laid out on the city's site:
- Collect and publish the city's past riverfront planning efforts so residents can see what's already been studied
- Define what "Riverwalk" actually means in Somersworth before asking for public input on it
- Test small, low-cost activations of riverfront space to build public interest ahead of any larger funding ask
What's Already Worth the Walk This Fall
While the committee works through that sequence, the existing trail off Buffumsville Road doesn't need anyone's approval to be useful right now. It's open daily, longer hours through the end of September and shorter hours starting in October, and this is the exact stretch of fall when the foliage along the Salmon Falls River is supposed to be at its best.
Downtown itself has been showing its own version of the same pattern, proving an idea works before scaling it. Anatolia Mediterranean, the Turkish and Mediterranean restaurant that's operated out of the Station 319 building on High Street, announced in late July that it's opening a second location inside the Centennial Hotel in downtown Concord, its first expansion beyond Somersworth. A few blocks away, Fold'd Community Diner on High Street runs as part of SOS Recovery Community Organization, built specifically to offer dining and workforce opportunities to people in recovery or reentering the community after incarceration.
Neither of those businesses waited for a master plan. They opened, built a following, and only then talked about growing. That's the same logic Somersworth's Riverwalk Committee is now applying to public space instead of a storefront: prove it works on a small scale, then ask for the rest.
For now, the fastest way to see any of this for yourself is still the way it's always been. Park near 19 Buffumsville Road, follow the trail along the water, and take in the foliage while it's still turning.
If you're the kind of person who tracks how a town's downtown actually changes, not just what a listing says about it, that's the sort of on-the-ground detail Williams & Co. follows across Southern Maine and Seacoast New Hampshire towns like Somersworth. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
