On the evening of May 28, guitar chords drifted past Joanie's Café as a small crowd gathered on the car-free stretch of California Avenue. Vice Mayor Greer Stone cut a ribbon. Terun's Maico Campilongo picked up a guitar and played. The occasion was modest: the first night of Thursday Live, a new monthly concert series the city had just signed off on. But if you've walked Cal Ave more than once this year, that ribbon cutting was one piece of a bigger pattern that's been building all spring and summer.
Since the pandemic, "temporary" has been the operative word on the block between El Camino Real and Birch Street. Orange plastic barriers stood in for parking spaces. Parklets went up without a shared design standard. The bike lane was more suggestion than infrastructure. That changed inside a span of about four months this year, and the shift tells you something the restaurant openings alone don't: Cal Ave stopped drifting. It's being designed on purpose now, by a City Council that finally quit extending the trial and started making permanent calls.
Four Decisions, One Spring
Look at the calendar and the pattern is hard to miss. In March, the council's Economic Development Committee began advancing a plan to let people drink alcohol outdoors during special events. That same month, staff brought forward a bike lane proposal and the council pushed back on it. By June 1, the council had approved permanent parklet design standards. And threaded through all of it, Cal Ave got a dedicated concert series of its own, taking the place of the informal 3rd Thursday celebrations the business district had leaned on since 2024.
None of these decisions made headlines on their own. Together, they mark the moment the street's long improvisation ended.
The Parklets Finally Get a Blueprint
The pandemic-era parklets never had a common look. Restaurants built what they could afford, when they could afford it. In March 2025, the council committed to keeping Cal Ave permanently car-free and kicked off a streetscape project covering repaving, bike lane markings, signage, planters, and street furniture, according to reporting that ran through Bay Area News Group.
The parklets themselves didn't get their standard until this June. On June 1, the council approved design guidelines with a small set of approved models for the car-free stretch, including a cabana with a sloped roof and overhangs and a pergola with a flat roof. An earlier version of the plan would have swept the parklets away entirely in favor of open tables and umbrellas. That version died after months of pushback from restaurant owners who made a simple weather argument: Palo Alto gets sun and rain, and customers don't linger outside without a roof over them.
Zareen's, one of Cal Ave's larger restaurants, has been vocal in supporting the changes. Operations head Sahlik Khan told the council foot traffic has increased tremendously since the closure, and that more people are lingering rather than just passing through.
A Bike Lane That Isn't Quite a Bike Lane
The original staff proposal was specific: a two-lane bike path painted brick red, five feet wide in each direction with a two-foot buffer, running fourteen feet across the center of the street, paired with an eight-foot pedestrian promenade running alongside it. That's what went to the council's Economic Development Committee in March.
What actually got approved was different. Instead of a painted lane, the city landed on thermoplastic bands stretched across the pavement, a traffic-calming texture meant to slow cyclists down rather than give them a dedicated corridor. Not everyone is satisfied. Michael and Lara Ekwall, who own the Cuban restaurant La Bodeguita del Medio on the block, wrote to the council that the mix of bikes, e-bikes, scooters, and outdoor dining has created "congested, confusing, and unsafe conditions." A resident who lives on Cal Ave, Todd Burke, has pushed to remove motorized bikes from the stretch entirely. If you walk the street on a busy evening, that tension between a lively promenade and a crowded one is still visible.
Two Concert Series, Different Rhythms
If you're planning your summer around Cal Ave's music, it's worth knowing there are actually two separate programs running through the same blocks, and they're easy to confuse. Thursday Live is the newer name, but Cal Ave has hosted some version of a Thursday evening gathering since 2024, when the city first allowed 3rd Thursday celebrations with open containers in the business district. This year's version is the first to get its own recurring lineup rather than a single annual permission slip.
| Series | Run | Cal Ave dates in 2026 | What to expect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday Live | New, monthly, May through September | Monthly, launched May 28 | Cal Ave's own series, free, local acts like Terun's owner sitting in |
| Twilight Concert Series | Citywide, rotates through Rinconada and Mitchell parks | One date, July 14 | Tribute act (Caravanserai, a Santana tribute), part of a program that also plays other parks all summer |
The Twilight Concert Series schedule lives on the city's own events page if you want to check dates before heading out. Thursday Live is the newer, Cal Ave-specific addition, and it's the one that's actually growing this year.
The Alcohol Question
Cal Ave is on its way to becoming Palo Alto's first "entertainment zone," a designation that lets people buy alcohol to-go from local restaurants and bars and drink it outdoors, at least during specific events. The council authorized a temporary version of this back in January, timed so residents could legally carry a drink outside during Super Bowl weekend, running 5 to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. The permanent ordinance moved through committee in March and headed to a final council vote on April 20, according to the Palo Alto Daily Post.
For now, the zone only activates during scheduled events like the concert series, World Cup watch parties, and restaurant-sponsored tastings, not as a standing, every-night policy. Some council members have floated making it more permanent down the road. Whether that happens is still an open question, and it's one worth watching if the evening feel of the street matters to you.
What's Actually New to Eat
The most visible change on the street itself, rather than in city hall, is a storefront that's been dark for years. Croissanté, a French bakery with locations in Santa Clara and Los Gatos, is taking over the old Antonio's Nut House space at 321 California Ave. Owner Sean Kang has described the timeline bluntly: there was a significant delay, and he's now expecting to open in late 2026. The space had been empty long enough that a lot of longtime residents had stopped registering it as a storefront at all.
Amid all of this, the one fixture that hasn't moved is the California Avenue Farmers Market, which still runs every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., year-round, rain or shine.
The Blocks You'll Be Detouring Around
Two housing proposals are working their way through the pipeline on this same stretch. One is at 414 California Ave, where the developer team has framed its design around the street's pedestrian-first identity. The other is a much larger project from Redco Development at 156 California Ave, the former Mollie Stone's site, which can rely on the state's builder's remedy provision in a way the 414 project cannot, giving it more legal momentum even though it's less visible on social media right now. Layer on top of that California's SB 79, a transit-oriented housing law that took effect July 1, 2026, and applies default density standards near Caltrain stations, including the one at Cal Ave. None of this shows up as visible construction yet. It's the reason to expect cranes on this block before it's finished changing.
It's also worth knowing the street's retail vacancy hasn't actually dropped the way all the new activity might suggest. The city's own numbers, drawn from CoStar and reported by Palo Alto Online, put California Avenue's vacancy rate at 5.4% as of Q1 2026, up slightly from 5.3% a year earlier. What's changing isn't emptiness finally filling in. It's turnover, old leases ending as new ones begin, happening inside a street that was already close to full.
Next month, Thursday Live plays again, the parklets will look the same as they do now, and the bike bands will still be thermoplastic instead of paint. That's the actual story of this summer: not what's new, but what finally got decided. A street that spent years being figured out in real time just told you what it's going to look like for a while.
If you live along California Avenue, or you're thinking about how blocks like this one shift over a few years of city decisions, Tom Correia has spent a career watching Palo Alto's neighborhoods change one council vote at a time, and is always glad to talk through what it means for your specific corner of town.
