Cindy Limani had already spent nearly three years building a following in nearby Milton, Wisconsin, before she ever looked twice at the empty MOD Pizza space on Janesville's Milton Avenue. She grew up in Janesville, went to Marshall Middle School and Craig High School, worked downtown at Riverside Family Restaurant, and gave birth to her daughter at Mercy Hospital. When she decided where to put her second restaurant, the decision wasn't really a market study.
"Janesville has always pulled me back."
That line explains Butter Me Up's origin story, and it also happens to describe almost everything new that's landed downtown this year. None of it is an outside chain testing the water. It's people and families who already had equity, history, or a working business somewhere in Rock County, betting a second time on the same handful of blocks near North Main Street.
Two blocks, eight years apart
Start with the Studer family. In 2016, Rishy and Quint Studer invested $2 million to turn four storefronts in the 100 block of North Main Street into what's now known as Block 42, home to Bodacious Brew, Bodacious Olive, and So Chopped, with balcony and terrace seating that looks out over the Rock River.
Eight years later, they did it again on a smaller scale. In 2024 the Studers paid $500,000, a quarter of their original outlay, for the former United Way building sitting across a parking lot from Block 42. They're calling it Block 43. Great Harvest Bakery and Cafe opened there this spring, on the mid-May timeline the Studers had targeted, with a manager who went through Great Harvest's own two-week training program before taking over day-to-day operations. The franchise itself started small too. Its second-ever location opened in Kalispell, Montana, back in 1978, and it's since grown to more than 150 stores.
Here's what's landed on Main Street and Milwaukee Street so far this year:
| New addition | Address | What was there before | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Butter Me Up | 3360 Milton Ave. | Former MOD Pizza | Open since this spring |
| Great Harvest Bakery and Cafe | 205 N. Main St. (Block 43) | Former United Way building | Open since May |
| Children's Museum of Rock County | 100 W. Milwaukee St. | Former First National Bank | Under construction, opening late 2026 |
A national chain left. A Rock County family moved in.
MOD Pizza's exit from the Milton Avenue storefront near Festival Foods left a plain vacancy. What's worth noticing is who filled it. Limani isn't opening a first restaurant and hoping it sticks. She already runs Cindy's Cafe in Milton, and Butter Me Up is a larger second location seating about 120 guests, run day to day by her daughter Xhulijeta and her husband.
That's a different kind of growth than a downtown usually sees. It isn't a franchise filling a gap. It's a family that already knows the Rock County customer, scaling up in the city Limani never really left.
The bank that's becoming a museum
Not everything new downtown is food. Construction is underway on the Children's Museum of Rock County, going into the old First National Bank building at 100 W. Milwaukee Street. The museum is expected to open in late 2026, with exhibits built around outdoor exploration, the county's agricultural roots, and an Inventor's Lab.
A bank building turning into a hands-on children's exhibit is the kind of reuse that tends to anchor a downtown rather than just decorate it. Paired with the retail reinvestment happening over on Main Street, it means the momentum isn't limited to coffee and pastries. It's showing up in a building that sat as a bank for generations.
What's left on the August calendar
Some of downtown's biggest annual draws already came and went earlier this month. The Rock County Historical Society ran its 68th annual Tallman Arts Festival, the oldest art fair in Wisconsin, on August 1 and 2. If you were going off the city's own 2026 preview, which listed the festival for August 28 to 30, that date was wrong. Good to know before you plan around it next year.
What's still ahead this month is bigger. Pistons and Props returns to the Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport August 28 through 30, and this year it's a full airshow, the first one in Southern Wisconsin in 14 years. The U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II Demonstration Team is flying a 15-minute performance both Saturday and Sunday, alongside a MiG-17 and Warbird Thunder.
The weekend breaks down like this:
- Friday, August 28, 4 to 8 p.m.: Veterans Night, fireworks at 8 p.m.
- Saturday, August 29, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.: car show, airshow performance 1 to 3 p.m.
- Sunday, August 30, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.: airshow performance 1 to 3 p.m.
If a walking tour is more your speed, Roaming Rich still has two left this month: the Old Fourth Ward on August 19, and a Midsummer Night's Scream on August 29, the same evening as the airshow's Saturday fireworks.
Why the pattern matters if you live here
None of this reads like coincidence once you line up the addresses. Block 42 and Block 43 sit across a single parking lot from each other. The Children's Museum is going into a Milwaukee Street bank building in the same historic core. Butter Me Up sits out on Milton Avenue, in a corridor the Studers haven't touched, but Limani's own history runs straight through downtown, from Riverside Family Restaurant to Mercy Hospital.
If you're trying to guess where the next new storefront opens, the safer bet isn't a random vacancy across town. It's the block next to whoever already proved the concept works here.
Curious what all this reinvestment downtown means for what your own home is worth this year? Teresa Skridla tracks the Rock County market block by block, not just at the county level. Request Your Free Home Valuation whenever you're ready to see where your street fits into the picture.
