If you have walked Laurel Street any weekday since April, you already know the shape of the change. The little green rectangle across from Mama Coco Cocina and Faith & Spirits is behind protective fencing. The alley behind it is a work zone. The four short-term parking spaces that used to sit tucked back there are gone, replaced by a marked drop-off and loading zone.
The park you knew is closed until early 2027. What is open, though, is more of Laurel Street than has been open in years.
What is actually fenced off, and for how long
The Harrington Park Refresh began on April 6, 2026 and is anticipated to be completed in early 2027, with contractors working 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. When it reopens, the .3-acre park will hold a 674-square-foot multi-purpose building with two restrooms including one ADA-accessible with a universal changing station, a mass timber pavilion, new seating, a rain garden, and replacement trees for the ten protected specimens the city is removing.
The 700 block of Laurel itself, the future Centennial Plaza that will eventually close to cars and turn into a curbless pedestrian promenade with 9-foot outdoor dining strips, is not part of this phase. That work, Phase 1B, is projected to begin in 2027.
So through the fall and winter, the practical picture is narrower than the headlines suggest. Storefront access along Laurel is preserved. Construction vehicles use the alley, entering from Cherry and Olive. Questions about noise, access, or timing route to the Downtown Revitalization Team at [email protected] or (650) 802-4310.
The Laurel Street walk, south to north
The subtraction most residents felt in 2025 was real. Dave's shoe shop closed after 33 years. Guy's Barbershop next door followed. Blind Tasting, Paxti's, and Sneakers American Grill all went dark. What replaced them is worth walking through in order, because the geographic center of Laurel has quietly shifted south of Harrington Park.
- Pazzo, 1179 Laurel Street. Andy Gambardella, formerly of Gambardella's, opened here with Neapolitan wood-fired pizza and housemade pasta. It sits at the south end of Laurel near Brittan Avenue, extending the walkable stretch in a direction that used to be an afterthought.
- Elia Restaurant. Co-owner Fatih Ulas already runs Elia locations in Pleasanton and Walnut Creek. He took the former Taurus space, meaning San Carlos got a proven Greek operation rather than someone's first experiment.
- Esnaf. Turkish cuisine in the former Cuisinett space. The stretch from Brittan to San Carlos Avenue now covers German, Greek, Turkish, Burmese at Rangoon Ruby, Cajun at CreoLa, regional American at TOWN inside the historic Tivoli building, and Italian, without a single repeated category.
- Rouge Lounge, 890 Laurel Street. A wine bar run by Huseyin and Sema Tosun. Reviewers name Steve and Sema directly, which is the kind of detail that only shows up when owners are on the floor.
- Highlands Sports Bar & Grill. Christian Conte, who owns Drakes, took the former Sneakers space and named the new concept after one of San Carlos's own parks. Thirty-six craft beers on tap, TVs in every booth, full lunch and dinner.
One more is coming. Conte's second new concept, SC Noodle House, is slated to open at 648 El Camino Real just down the street from Drakes, with renovations starting in September and a mid-November to early-December opening for oxtail-broth pho, banh mi, and pan-Asian dishes alongside a Japanese whiskey menu.
The pattern in that list is not "seven new restaurants." It is that every operator on it already had a stake in San Carlos or the Peninsula before signing a lease. That is a different thing from turnover.
The drink circuit that is not on Laurel
Two of the most useful weekend rooms in San Carlos are a short walk off the main drag, which matters more this year because they are not affected by the construction footprint at all.
Domenico Winery is family-owned and has been producing Cal-Italia varietals for over 20 years. Its ticketed calendar runs year-round, including the Annual Orphan Barrel Tasting each spring. Devil's Canyon Brewing Company is a different register entirely: award-winning craft beer, a covered back patio, and a rotating calendar of breadmaking classes, comedy nights, and themed tastings. Hapa's Brewing Company has quietly built its own weekly rhythm, with Brainstormer Trivia nights now a fixture.
If you have out-of-town guests through the fall, the honest itinerary is Pazzo for dinner, Domenico or Devil's Canyon after, and the Laurel Street stroll saved for daylight so the fenced park does not confuse anyone about what the neighborhood is.
Anchor dates worth putting on the calendar
Construction disruption is easier to plan around when you know which weekends the city and its business partners are already programming. A few worth blocking off:
- Art & Wine Faire, October 10 and 11, 2026. Over 200 artists spread across three stages, beer and wine, and food vendors along Laurel Street and San Carlos Avenue. The Faire draws over 40,000 people annually and is free to attend.
- Sunday Farmers Market, every week, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. On Laurel between San Carlos Avenue and Cherry Street. Produce, bread, flowers, baked goods, and specialty food from local vendors.
- Molly O's live Irish music for a mid-week reset without a car trip.
- Rotating programming at Devil's Canyon and Domenico Winery, both of which post their own calendars.
Two spring notes for planning ahead: the city's Earth Day event returned to Laurel on April 19 this year and typically runs annually through the Sustainability Division, and the Burton Park community campout on August 7 and 8 has become a family-calendar fixture with tents, s'mores, field games, and a dusk movie.
Getting around while the alley is a work zone
The construction traffic pattern is more predictable than the rumor mill has suggested. Contractors enter from Cherry and Olive, so the alley behind the 700 block is where deliveries and equipment move. If you used those four short-term spaces behind the park as your default, that habit is over. They are now a drop-off and loading zone.
Two workarounds most residents have not thought about:
- Caltrain lot spaces 99 through 197 are free to the public Monday through Friday from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and all day Saturday and Sunday. For a dinner reservation at Elia or a Sunday market run, that is the shortest walk to the south end of Laurel with the lowest chance of circling.
- The Sunday Farmers Market footprint on Laurel between San Carlos Avenue and Cherry is untouched by the Harrington Park work. If you had drifted out of the market habit, this is the year to drift back in.
The city's construction management team has committed to communicating in advance with surrounding businesses if activity will affect their hours or access, and the Downtown Prosperity Team has held coffee chats with owners of Faith & Spirits, Mama Coco Cocina, TOWN, Spasso, and Stamp Bar & Grill to work through parking and alley congestion. Practically, that means the businesses closest to the fencing are the ones with the best real-time information about a given week.
A quieter thesis about a construction year
The version of this story that circulates on other blogs is that Laurel Street rebuilt itself after the 2024 closures. That is true, but it misses what the current year is actually testing.
A downtown with a fenced-off central park is a downtown that has to earn its foot traffic in the surrounding blocks. From April 2026 through early 2027, San Carlos is running that experiment in real time. The evidence so far is that Pazzo pulled traffic south, Highlands and Rouge Lounge held the middle, Elia and Esnaf broadened the reason to come at all, and the Sunday market, the Art & Wine Faire, and the winery and brewery calendars carried the weekend rhythm.
When Harrington Park reopens with its new plaza, restrooms, pavilion, and rain garden, and when the 700 block eventually converts to a curbless pedestrian plaza in the phase after that, the street the park spills into will be denser and more useful than the one that existed when the fencing went up. That is the outcome to plan for.
In the meantime, if you have been giving downtown a wide berth because of the construction signage, walk it again. Start at Brittan, work north, and take the alley detour when you get to the park. The Laurel Street you find will be closer to the one you will keep for the next decade than the one you remember from two years ago.
Ready to talk through what your block looks like in the current market, whether you are staying put and remodeling around the new downtown or thinking a few years ahead? Sandra Darrow is happy to schedule a free, personalized market consultation and walk the Peninsula's micro-markets with you at your own pace.
