Promenade on Forest in Laguna Beach: What's New This Fall
October 8, 2026
October 8, 2026
"After seeing the fence and the jackhammer for so long, I'm happy to see people down here," Marisa Fader told the Orange County Register the day before the ribbon cutting on lower Forest Avenue. Fader is the granddaughter of Joe Bushard, who opened Bushard's Pharmacy on Forest in 1946. She now runs the business side of the store, which is still in its original footprint and has never been remodeled.
On Friday, September 25, the city cut the ribbon on the permanent Promenade on Forest. Bushard's marked its 80th anniversary that same evening, and Moulin, the Parisian-style café nearby, marked its 10th. A week earlier, the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center had opened its new museum one block over at 239 Broadway. That puts two new public spaces a short walk apart near Main Beach. Both are free to walk into, and neither one depends on summer crowds. One of them also has no city program on its fall calendar. That matters more than it might seem.
The first promenade went up in June 2020 for about $250,000, including $10,000 for security. It was a pandemic fix that gave restaurants and shops somewhere to serve people at a distance. The permanent version cost $7.2 million, which City Manager Dave Kiff described as under budget. The difference shows in what was taken out. The roadway, curbs, sidewalks and parking spaces between Glenneyre Street and Coast Highway are gone, and a brick promenade with art and seating areas took their place.
The new plaza has:
A few items were still open at the ribbon cutting. Kiff said some interior brickwork needed finishing, the Wi-Fi speaker system wasn't active yet, and the Coast Highway end needed a few tweaks. If you walk through this week and notice unfinished edges, that's the reason.
The project had opponents. Some community members argued that it removes needed parking, takes away from the town's historic character and could make flooding worse. So far, no one has published a count of how parking nearby has held up since the opening. For now, the closest city lots are a 25-space lot at 234 Broadway, the 36-space Peppertree lot, and the 208-space Glenneyre structure.
Before the plaza was finished, the other half of this story opened one block away. SHACC moved into the building at 239 Broadway that Laguna Drug left empty when it closed in 2019. The museum spent more than two decades in the hills of San Clemente. Founder Dick Metz said the building there was always meant to be temporary. He had hoped to find a permanent home in Dana Point, but the Broadway building was too good to turn down.
For Metz, this is a homecoming. His mother taught school in Laguna Beach, and his father ran a bar and restaurant beside the Main Beach lifeguard tower. "So I literally grew up right across the street from here," he told Stu News Laguna. He sold his home in Idaho and another Laguna property to help buy the building.
The collection is large. More than 800 surfboards fill the space, about 200 yards from Main Beach. Five of them are connected to Duke Kahanamoku. Kahanamoku made or rode eight known boards in his lifetime, and the other three are at the Smithsonian, in Australia and in Waikiki. "These are the crown jewels of the surfing world," Metz said. Metz's own 109-pound redwood board is also on display. The first rotating exhibit covers Hawaiian surfing history. An interactive exhibit called the Stoke Machine lets visitors explore 20 surf breaks, and there's a research library upstairs.
Several things make SHACC useful on an ordinary weeknight, not just for a one-time visit:
This is where the two openings connect. This summer, the city ran a recurring music series on the Forest stage Fridays through Sundays, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., from July 10 through August 30. That posted schedule has no dates after August. The city's Sunset Serenades run through October 2, but they're held at the Heisler Park Amphitheater, not on Forest.
That leaves the newly finished plaza with no scheduled programming heading into October. The people who were there before the ribbon cutting were not attending a city event. Mayor Mark Orgill named reading circles, high school students who talked about using it as a meeting space, and other groups he has seen gathering there. "It's becoming a place where people see others they might not run into in a year," he said. He connected the plaza to Vision Laguna 2030, a plan from the turn of the millennium in which about 2,000 residents described the gathering place they wanted the town to have.
The businesses on Forest have noticed more people too. Fader said Bushard's has seen more people shopping, eating and lounging since part of the plaza opened in July. The Daily Pilot's opening coverage named Alessa as one of the restaurants on the promenade, and the 133 Band played at the ribbon cutting. Between Bushard's apothecary shelves, Moulin, Alessa and a free museum a block away, these blocks now offer an afternoon without a ticketed event.
The fall's scheduled events are nearby but not on the plaza. Several are within a short walk, and the Promenade and SHACC sit between them.
Hospitality Night will be the first big downtown holiday evening with Forest Avenue as a permanent plaza. Where the crowd ends up that night will show how the new layout handles a full downtown.
The plaza is done, but two related decisions are still open.
The first is outdoor dining. On September 22, the City Council voted 5-0 to move proposed parking rule changes into community workshops. It also directed staff to help businesses that serve outdoors under temporary approvals get temporary use permits and coastal development permits by January 1, 2027. That starts an 18-month transition while the city finishes its own approvals and the California Coastal Commission reviews the related Local Coastal Program amendment. Staff is also preparing outdoor dining design guidelines, which will go to the Planning Commission before the council formally adopts them. The workshops are where residents can weigh in on how much of downtown keeps its outdoor tables.
The second is one street over. The Ocean Avenue and Beach Street improvements were tabled 5-0 on September 2. No final design, coastal permit or construction plan was approved, and no date has been set for the project to return. The city's project page still shows the August forecast of bidding in October and construction in the fourth quarter of 2026. The tabling vote came after that forecast, so don't expect construction on Ocean Avenue this fall.
For now, lower Forest Avenue is finished, SHACC is open to the public on Broadway, and the plaza's fall calendar has nothing scheduled.
If you've been watching downtown change and want to talk about what the Promenade and the Broadway corridor mean for your corner of the Village, I'd be glad to compare notes over a coffee at Moulin. Mahlia Rittenhouse is always happy to talk about Laguna Beach. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
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