Auburn throws itself the same party every year around Labor Day, and most residents can recite the shape of it from memory: Main Street fills with chrome, the courthouse square turns into a parking lot for cars worth more than houses, and you either lean into the noise or you plan your errands around it. This year the shape has actually moved. The reason isn't a new headliner or a bigger crowd. It's a construction fence at the corner of 9th and Main, right where the parade has always turned, where the old Auburn Hotel used to stand for more than a century before it came down in 2024.
That corner is now a steel skeleton for a building called The Auburn, and depending on how far along the framing is by September 4, it will change where people naturally gather to watch the cars roll by. If you've lived here through a few ACD Festivals, this is worth knowing before you set up your lawn chair in the usual spot.
The corner that's different this year
The old Auburn Hotel sat at 9th and Main since 1870, and for generations of festival-goers it was simply part of the backdrop, a place to duck into for shade or a cold drink while classics idled past. It closed for years before the deterioration became too severe to fix, and the Auburn Development Group demolished it in 2024. In its place is an $18 million, four-story project with nearly 11,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and restaurant space, 14 apartments on the second and third floors, and privately owned residences on top. JICI Construction out of Angola is building it, with Matt Faber of Waterloo-based M.F. Projects managing the job.
When ground broke back in the spring of 2025, Auburn Development Group president Kevin Minard said the goal was to have significant structure in place by that year's ACD Festival. That timeline slipped. As of this past January, the steel frame was still going up, months after the original target. Mayor Dave Clark called it a building that will "sit here on this corner for over 100 years," but for this year's 70th festival, the more immediate reality is that the corner is still an active job site rather than a finished storefront. That's not a reason to skip the parade. It's a reason to scout your viewing spot a block earlier than usual instead of assuming 9th and Main is open the way it's always been.
Before the weekend even starts
The festival this year is the 70th annual, and the theme, "Year of the Century Car," is built around vehicles produced in 1926 or earlier. That's a narrower band than most years, which means the mix of cars downtown skews older and rarer than the typical Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg lineup. If you bring a car from that era to one of the ACD Club's sanctioned meets, you're eligible for a Century Car badge, a small detail that's pulling a specific kind of collector to town this year.
The action doesn't wait for the weekend. On Sunday, August 30, the National Auto and Truck Museum hosts its annual Garage Cruise, a $10 ticket that gets you into six different stops around town, including NATMUS's Youth Education Center, the ACD Automobile Museum's Conservation Center, Kendal Performance & Restoration, and several private collections. A couple of days later, the 51st annual Hoosier Tour sends a caravan of Auburns, Cords, and Duesenbergs out to Pleasant Lake for a ride aboard the historic Nickel Plate 765 steam locomotive, with limited public tickets available through the Indiana Rail Experience.
What the weekend actually looks like
| Day | What's happening | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Sun, Aug 30 | NATMUS Garage Cruise, six stops, $10 ticket | Starts at the museum |
| Week of Sept 1 | 51st Hoosier Tour to Pleasant Lake via steam locomotive 765 | Departs downtown |
| Fri, Sept 4 | Downtown Cruise-In, free Main Stage concerts | Courthouse Square |
| Sat, Sept 5 | ACD Club Car Show, Parade of Classics, Ticket to Ride, Fast and Fabulous, Main Stage | Eckhart Park, Courthouse Square, James Cultural Plaza |
Both festival nights, the Main Stage lineup features Whoa Man!, the Hubie Ashcraft Band, Weird Science, and REkT, with Dylan Youman opening. The Parade of Classics is the centerpiece of Saturday, with the Baron Brigade Marching Band from DeKalb High School leading the way and NATMUS's big red Futurliner #10 making its usual pass down the route. This year's grand marshal is Sarah Fisher, the former IndyCar driver and team owner, riding through streets that in recent years have started filling around 1 p.m.
Where the cars come in, and where you can still park
Vehicle parking and registration for the main show cars starts at 10 a.m., with entry at the north gate at 4th and Main and the south gate at 11th and Main. If you need accessible parking, there's a dedicated lot at the corner of 5th and Main, right next to Auburn Brewing Company, which has become the unofficial landmark locals use when giving directions during festival week.
A few things worth knowing if you're trying to get around rather than just watch:
- Side streets off Main tend to open up faster than Main itself once the parade has passed, especially north of 7th Street.
- The James Cultural Plaza area stays walkable longer into the evening than the courthouse square, since Ticket to Ride wraps by 5 p.m.
- Eckhart Park has its own parking and draws a steadier, calmer crowd than downtown, which makes it the better bet if you want to see the cars without the density.
The two sides of Saturday
Saturday splits into two different festivals depending on where you stand. Eckhart Park hosts the ACD Club's own car show, a quieter, more collector-focused morning where the cars sit still long enough to actually look at them. Downtown is the opposite experience. By 5 p.m., Fast and Fabulous powered by SweetCars fills the streets around the courthouse square with more than 100 modern exotics from SweetCars and the Fort Wayne Driving Club, plus a food truck area for anyone who wants to eat while they watch. Earlier in the afternoon, Ticket to Ride at James Cultural Plaza offers free rides in an actual Auburn, Cord, or Duesenberg, with musical guest Maleena Felger performing from 3 to 5 p.m.
If you only have an hour to spend downtown, this is the tension worth knowing about going in: the courthouse square is where the noise and the crowd are, and Eckhart Park is where the cars are easiest to actually see.
If you want quiet, or you want the noise
For a table above the action, Auburn City Steakhouse, run by third-generation restaurateur Bob Lebamoff, has a second-floor lounge called Davis & James for guests 21 and up, a reasonable perch if you want dinner without standing in the street. A few blocks off Main, Mimi's Retreat has been pouring beer and serving hand-breaded appetizers since 2012, still run day to day by owners Van and Mimi Miller, and it draws regulars from as far as Steuben and Noble counties who treat it as a standing stop rather than a festival-week novelty. If you're looking for something more low-key and closer to the crowd, Mad Anthony Tap Room is a familiar name for a casual pour between events.
The festival doesn't only show up once a year
One thing that's easy to forget if you only think about Labor Day weekend: downtown Auburn runs its own smaller cruise-ins all summer. The Third Thursday Downtown Cruise-In has one date left on the 2026 calendar, September 17, a free event from 5 to 8 p.m. around the courthouse square, with cars entering at Cedar and 7th Street and gates opening right at 5 with no early entry. It's a smaller, calmer version of what Labor Day weekend does at full volume, and it's a reminder that the car culture here isn't a once-a-year performance. It's baked into how downtown operates most of the year.
That's really the throughline for anyone who's watched this festival for a while. The cars change, the theme changes, and this year even the corner where the parade turns has changed. What hasn't moved is how much of downtown Auburn's identity gets built around a handful of blocks that fill up, empty out, and fill up again every summer.
If you're curious about what a changing downtown means for property values or timing a move around a season like this one, that's a conversation Triad Real Estate Services is always happy to have, festival week or not.
