The October calendar at Allegheny RiverTrail Park is still busy. Friday, October 9 has food trucks, and October 16 has the park's 15th-anniversary party. Click ahead to December 2026 and the park's own events page says "No Results Found."
The empty page is one sign of the shifts at Aspinwall's riverfront this fall. A theater company is leaving, a sauna is staying past summer, and the park is raising money to turn its building into what it calls a "four-season hub for community life." For 15 years the park has run on warm-weather programming, and it is now working on the other half of the year.
What's Left on This Season's Calendar
The season is ending on a schedule you can see now. Here is what the park and the borough have posted for the rest of 2026:
- Friday, October 9, 5 to 9 p.m.: The only other October event on the park calendar tagged Food Truck Friday.
- Saturday, October 10, 3 to 6 p.m.: The borough's Fall in the Wall at 217 Commercial Avenue, with face painting, a magician and pony rides.
- Friday, October 16: RiverRocks '26 at the park, a 21-and-over fundraiser. The same evening, the Aspinwall Police Department is showing "Goosebumps" from 7 to 9 p.m. at Firemen's Memorial Park.
- Sunday, October 25, 4 to 6 p.m.: Trunk or Treat at the Lauri Ann West Community Center. No registration needed.
- Saturday, October 31: Trick-or-treating starts at 6 p.m. The Firefighter's Costume Parade follows at 7:30 p.m.
Food Truck Fridays, sponsored this year by First National Bank, were announced as a weekly series running "from May to October." The season opened May 15 with El Sabor Latin Kitchen and Trace Brewing. The park hasn't named a final Friday. October 9 is simply the last one posted so far, so check the calendar before planning a later dinner by the river.
After Halloween, the park's November calendar shows Fox Chapel Crew practices through the first week and nothing else. The high school crew's fall season ends November 6. In the final stretch, starting October 26, practices run Monday through Thursday from 3 to 5 p.m. and Saturday mornings from 7 to 8:30. The weekend Yoga Flow program is listed as running May through September. Trace Brewing's service at the park is listed for summer Fridays, 5 to 9 p.m.
The One Thing Still Booked Into November
Only one park offering has bookings past the crew season. Bad Sauna, run by Pittsburgh sauna operator Greg Schaffer, arrived at the park this summer. The park announced it in late June and aimed for a July 9 opening. Its online booking system already shows park sessions on November 5, 6 and 8.
| Session | Length | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Open Session | 60 minutes | $18 |
| Sounds at the Sauna | 2 hours | $33 |
Prices above come from Bad Sauna's booking page. The sauna holds 16 people. Park members got a free first session and 10 percent off after that when the sauna was announced.
Schaffer came to steam bathing through a Russian bath house in San Francisco. He then spent five weeks studying sauna culture in the Baltic region and became a "bath master" after attending the International Bath Academy. He was later certified as a "sauna master" by the Deutsch Sauna Akademie. The park's profile explains why the riverbank suits a sauna. In the traditions he studied, saunas sit beside water so bathers can move between hot and cold. Bad Sauna doesn't ask anyone to jump into the Allegheny. Schaffer told the park that he had never felt much of a connection to Pittsburgh's rivers, and that the riverfront setting gave him one.
A sauna works better in November than in July. It is the clearest sign yet of how the park could be used in cold weather. One caution: Bad Sauna's website still labels its posted park timetable "Summer Hours" and lists no winter hours, so the November bookings are the furthest-out dates confirmed so far.
Why the Theater Is Moving Downtown
Riverfront Theater Company is leaving. The volunteer-run group was founded as Fox Chapel Community Players about six decades ago and moved to the Aspinwall park in 2019, where it drew strong crowds for "If/Then" and "Company." It will spend at least a year at Three Stories, home of the Peirce Theater on Liberty Avenue in the Cultural District, TribLive reported on September 15.
Artistic director Caitlin Dobronz put the money plainly. Renting the park's stage with lights and sound came to close to $6,500 for a weekend. "The cost of doing one show at the park adds up to more than a full season Downtown," she told the paper. That price makes more sense in light of how the park is funded. Allegheny RiverTrail Park is an independent nonprofit and a state-certified land trust. It is not a borough park, and it runs on earned income and private fundraising as well as public funding.
Dobronz named a second reason. A planned multiyear park renovation would have moved performances into an outdoor tent, and she said the logistics would rule out "fully realized" productions. The park did not immediately respond to TribLive's questions about the renovation. The company's last 2026 show, "Spring Awakening," runs November 12 through 21 in its new 95-seat home. Its leaders hope to come back to the park in some form, possibly for their children's program.
What the Park Has Said About Its Next Chapter
The park hasn't published drawings, a budget or a start date. What it has published is a statement of purpose, on the RiverRocks '26 page:
"Now we have the opportunity to revive the gathering place at the center of our front yard."
RiverRocks on October 16 is the public launch. The evening starts with a new cocktail hour called Taste of the Riverfront, followed by a chef-curated dinner and a program on "the park's remarkable journey and bold vision for the future." Nancy Stack Kingsley and Peggy McKnight are honorary chairs, and Jon and Liza Allen and Ginny Merchant are event chairs.
The public money on record so far is small. On September 15, 2026, Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Financing Authority approved $34,327 for Aspinwall Borough's "Aspinwall Park Phase I Redevelopment Weather Relief Station." The grant record doesn't describe the station or when it will be built. The words "Phase I" and "weather relief" do fit a park that wants people to stay when the temperature drops.
Some things remain unknown. The park hasn't said who is designing the renovation, what it will cost in total, or which parts of the grounds will stay open during work. A master plan by the Pittsburgh firm EPD, listed in 2020, described a landform amphitheater, a constructed wetland and a "Raindrops to River" stormwater concept. Nothing published connects that plan to the building work now being described.
The Road Work at the Entrance
The other project affects how people get into the park. Aspinwall has $2 million in federal FY2026 funding to realign Brilliant Avenue where it meets Freeport Road at the park entrance, with the aim of safer pedestrian access and fewer conflicts between cars and cyclists. WPXI reported in April that there was no construction start date yet. Borough minutes from April 8, 2026 say the Brilliant Avenue and Freeport Road improvements will be coordinated after utility work, with updates to come. No newer schedule has been posted.
Put together, the park faces two open timelines at its front gate and in its main building. The theater expected a tent to replace the stage during construction, and the park's only confirmed off-season programming is a 16-person sauna booked into early November. After Halloween the calendar goes quiet, and that quiet stretch is exactly what the park's plans are meant to fill.
If you follow the RiverTrail Park plans because you live near the river or are thinking about the Aspinwall and Fox Chapel area, David Onufer and The Onufer Team are glad to talk through what the park and the Brilliant Avenue work could mean for your street. Contact Us anytime. We'll keep watching both as details come out.
