For most of the last five years, a summer Sunday in Palo Alto ran on two separate tracks. The California Avenue Farmers' Market did its work between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., then the strip went quiet while the crowd drifted back toward University or out to Stanford Shopping Center for the afternoon. The car-free street was a rehearsal for a public space that had not quite arrived.
Summer 2026 is the first one where the rehearsal is over. In March the City Council converted the pandemic-era closure into a permanent one, and the ordinance that would let you carry a glass of Georgian wine from Bevri onto the sidewalk during a concert is now working its way through approvals. The Sunday didn't get louder. The street did.
What Actually Changed In March
The car-free zone on Cal Ave is not new. What is new is that it is no longer temporary. After several short-term extensions to the car-free program, the council agreed to permanently close it to cars last March, and enhanced the strip with additional infrastructure like planters, bollards, colored pavement and bike lane markings.
That physical build-out matters more than the vote. Bollards and planters signal to tenants, landlords, and diners that the configuration is worth investing in. The retail data reflects that: on California Avenue, the retail vacancy rate was down to 5.4 percent in 2025 from 10 percent a year ago, roughly a halving in twelve months while University's rate stayed above 13 percent.
That gap is the thesis of this post. The two downtowns are no longer converging. Cal Ave is filling from a different well than University, and the tenant mix arriving between April and the fall reads like a plan rather than a coincidence.
The Morning Anchor Has Not Moved
The one part of the Sunday that has stayed exactly where it was is the California Avenue Farmers' Market, which still runs every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., year-round, along Cal Ave between El Camino and Birch. Urban Village runs it, and the first Sunday of each month adds knife sharpening near the produce tables.
What has changed is the room around the market. Before the permanent closure, the market ended and the street reset to a leftover state of orange barriers and taped-off asphalt. Now the market ends and the street stays a street, with the parklets, planters, and colored paving that Urban Village vendors had been asking about for years.
The Tenants Arriving Between April And Fall
Between the market and the evening concerts, the middle of the day used to be the weak part of a Cal Ave Sunday. That is the gap the 2026 openings are filling. The wave breaks across three roughly connected streets:
| Opening | Location | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Rikyu | 121 Lytton Ave | Matcha and coffee cafe with Japanese sandos from the Hiroshi omakase team, mid-May opening |
| La Corneta Taqueria | 324 University Ave | The San Francisco taqueria's fifth location, in the former SliderBar |
| Bistro Demiya | Downtown Palo Alto | An elevated Japanese-curry restaurant from a Cupertino couple, summer 2026 |
| Taste of Anatolia | 263 University Ave | Turkish coffee, breakfast, and sweets in the former Round Table Pizza |
| Zingster's | 220B University Ave | Fremont-born burger shop, already open |
| Bacio di Latte | Stanford Shopping Center | Brazilian gelato chain's first Bay Area location, opened in late April |
| Arsicault Bakery | 388 Cambridge Ave | The San Francisco croissant bakery expanding to Palo Alto |
| Croissanté | 321 California Ave | Independent bakery, late 2026 |
The team behind Los Altos omakase restaurant Hiroshi is opening a matcha cafe in the former TOMO Tea House footprint. In addition to matcha and coffee beverages with housemade syrups, Rikyu will also offer Japanese sandos (including katsu-style chicken, Japanese A5 wagyu beef and shrimp katsu), chirashi and matcha desserts. Owner Daiji Uehara expects a mid-May opening, pending final inspection. Cupertino residents Demi Ebara and husband Arthur de la Cueva are opening their sixth Bay Area restaurant this summer in downtown Palo Alto. Bistro Demiya is an elevated version of their casual chain Demiya, which specializes in Japanese curry. Brazilian gelato chain Bacio di Latte expects to land at Stanford Shopping Center in late April, according to a company representative. The gelateria has more than 200 locations in Brazil and 16 in Southern California, but this will be the first in the Bay Area.
Read the table sideways and a pattern shows up. Every new tenant on Cal Ave itself is a place you sit down or take something to eat. Not a bank branch, not a phone store, not another salon in a spot where a restaurant folded. The rewrite of the strip is deliberate.
The Places That Held The Street Through The Quiet Years
The new openings would land differently without the operators who kept the street alive when working-from-home cut daytime traffic to a trickle. Zareen's has been anchoring the Pakistani-Indian corner since 2016. Terun and iTalica, both from Maico Campilongo, put musicians outside during the early parklet years. Bevri and Khazana have been sharing a parklet at the eastern end.
Pavel Sirotin, owner at the Georgian restaurant Bevri, is a fan of Palo Alto's parklet program. His restaurant shares a parklet with neighboring restaurant Khazana. That shared-parklet model is what the entertainment-zone proposal is trying to formalize across the entire strip.
The Entertainment Zone Is The Missing Middle
If you left Cal Ave at 1 p.m. last summer, you left because the market ended and the street had no next act. That is what the entertainment zone is designed to fix.
Cal Ave. is about to be converted into Palo Alto's first "entertainment zone," an area where residents can purchase alcohol to-go from local bars, wineries and restaurants and drink it outdoors. At first, the right to drink outdoors will only exist during special events like the concert series that the city hopes to revive on Cal Ave.; watch parties for events like the upcoming World Cup; and tastings sponsored by area restaurants.
According to reporting in the Palo Alto Weekly, the change could take effect this summer if the council signs off. In practical terms, the World Cup watch parties and the revived Cal Ave concert series are the first events that would use it, and the closest analogue city staff have cited is Bourbon Street. That is a shorthand that has understandably raised eyebrows among residents worried about crowd management, and it is also the reason the initial version is limited to special events rather than permanent open-container permission.
The parklet work that would support all of this is still catching up. "Challenges persist in identifying and reaching agreement on public safety risk mitigation measures, particularly when adapting the existing parklet program for expanded space on the closed portion of California Avenue," the report states. The city plans to continue working with the ARB committee and with area merchants before coming back to the City Council in the spring of 2026 with a final plan for Cal Ave. parklets and other outdoor amenities, according to the report.
The through-line for a resident: the infrastructure is being installed in real time this summer, not next year.
The 6:30 Handoff To Rinconada And Mitchell
The evening piece of a Palo Alto Sunday sits outside Cal Ave entirely, at the Twilight Concert Series the city runs from June through August. The format has held steady long enough that regulars know it by heart:
- Free admission at either Rinconada Park (777 Embarcadero Road) or Mitchell Park
- Music starts at 6:30 p.m.
- Food trucks park on-site so dinner is handled
- The concert nights rotate between the two parks across the summer
Rinconada is the older setting. Rinconada is Palo Alto's second oldest park (after El Camino). Open grassy areas, two children's playgrounds, nine tennis courts (6 with lights), backboard, picnic areas with barbecues (1 group area), municipal swimming pool (lap and recreational) and children's pool, redwood grove, multipurpose concrete bowl, benches, jogging/walking path, and public restrooms. The concrete bowl and the redwood grove are what people mean when they call it the Palo Alto concert park. Mitchell, farther south, tends to draw the Charleston-Meadows and Greenmeadow families.
If you are new to the rhythm, the underrated move is walking or biking. Cal Ave to Rinconada is under two miles, and doing the loop on foot is exactly the kind of Sunday the permanent closure was designed to enable.
If You Have Out-Of-Town Guests
The Sunday that is easiest to explain to visitors right now looks like this:
- Coffee and a pastry near Cal Ave before the market opens at 9 a.m., which puts you ahead of the line at H&H Fresh Fish and the flower vendors.
- Walk the market end to end from El Camino toward Birch, then break for lunch at Zareen's, Terun, or Bevri and Khazana's parklet.
- Afternoon at Stanford Shopping Center if the group wants gelato at Bacio di Latte, or back downtown for a matcha flight at Rikyu once it opens.
- Head to Rinconada or Mitchell by 6 p.m. to claim grass before the 6:30 downbeat.
That is a full day that never asks a car to move more than once.
For Homeowners Reading This
There is a reason a boutique advisor pays attention to a permanent-closure vote and a vacancy rate. When a commercial strip halves its vacancy in a year and the tenant pipeline is skewed toward places you want to walk to on a Sunday, the residential blocks that feed that strip absorb the difference in ways that show up in offers. It is not a specific number and it is not a promise. It is a signal that Old Palo Alto, Evergreen Park, Mayfield, and the College Terrace edges are being underwritten by a downtown that is finally functioning the way the plan drawings said it would.
If you own on one of those blocks and are trying to time a sale into a market that is actively resetting around you, or if you are moving into the area and want a read on which streets are absorbing the Cal Ave effect fastest, that is the kind of question worth working through with someone who tracks both the transactions and the ordinances. Sunaina Arora works these Sundays into the pricing conversation because they belong there. Get your instant home valuation to start the numbers side, and bring the questions about the street when we talk.
