By the city's own count, California Avenue has never looked healthier. Bruce Fukuji, the urban architect leading the Cal Ave redesign, told the City Council this spring that vacancy on the car-free block fell from 16% in 2023 to 7.5% in 2025, and that revenue from food sales rose 13% over the car-free era, Palo Alto Online reported.
In late October, a Bay Area pizza operator with four other locations announced that its Cal Ave restaurant would close after Friday, October 30 service, about a year after it opened. Square Pie Guys founder Marc Schechter told Palo Alto Online that the Palo Alto location's catering business was going well, but dinner and weekends were slow. "Our Saturdays and Sundays were slower than our Tuesdays and Wednesdays," he said.
Since the block between El Camino Real and Birch Street became permanently car-free, Cal Ave has stopped being a general-purpose commercial strip. It rewards two specific formats and has little room for a restaurant between them. This winter, with new pavement down and new parklet rules in effect, that sorting is no longer a side effect of the closure. It is how the street is designed.
A pizzeria's own account of what went wrong
Schechter's explanation is worth reading closely because it comes from someone who runs the same concept elsewhere. All four of his other locations, in San Francisco, Oakland, Campbell and Walnut Creek, have dinner and weekend rushes. Palo Alto did not.
He gave two reasons. The first was frontage. "I feel like all the other locations, they have really good frontage on the street," he told Palo Alto Online, describing how drivers who had seen a restaurant online or in a delivery app could pass by and recognize it. On a street with no cars, that recognition never happens.
The second reason matters more for anyone deciding where to eat on Cal Ave this winter. Schechter said the restaurants that succeed there are either grab-and-go concepts in small shops or full-service restaurants, and Square Pie Guys sat between the two. An August pop-up called Bar Pie Guys tested a full-service version in the same space. He called it "really successful" but said converting the whole business to full service would have been too much.
The restaurant had opened at 369 California Ave. in September 2025, in the former Local Kitchens space.
Weekday strength fits the street's location. The Cal Ave block sits near Stanford Research Park, which has more than 150 companies and roughly 23,000 workers, according to the Palo Alto Ledger. A catering order from an office park and a Saturday night table are two very different businesses, and they don't always share an address.
The restaurants that built outdoor rooms
At the other end are the restaurants Schechter described as the street's other success story. These are full-service operators that turned the empty roadway into dining space.
Several of the block's largest restaurants told the council in June that they support the car-free street. The owners of iTalico, Terun and Zareen's all backed its continued evolution as a pedestrian thoroughfare. Maico and Franco Campilongo, co-owners of iTalico and Terun, also curated the classic cars at the May 28 launch of the city's Thursday Live concert series, and Maico Campilongo played on one of its stages.
Sahlik Khan, head of operations at Zareen's, wrote to the council that foot traffic had "increased tremendously since the closure":
"More people are spending time on California Avenue, lingering longer, and enjoying the district as a destination rather than simply passing through."
Khan's letter was quoted by Palo Alto Online.
Lingering is what a full-service restaurant sells, and in a Palo Alto November it depends on cover overhead. That is why parklets became the center of the redesign debate. Fukuji's first proposal would have removed them and limited Cal Ave dining to tables with umbrellas and planters. In June 2025, council members and business leaders effectively killed that idea, citing the money some restaurants had already spent on parklets and the need for space diners could use in cold or wet weather, Palo Alto Online reported. Charlie Weidanz, CEO of the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce, told the council that without reliable options for diners in rain, cold or heat, "local businesses' vitality and sustainability are at risk."
Not every full-service owner agrees on the street's direction. Michael and Lara Ekwall, co-owners of the Cuban restaurant La Bodeguita del Medio, were among the merchants who proposed in 2025 bringing back one eastbound car lane between El Camino Real and Birch Street, with parallel Cambridge Avenue becoming one-way in the opposite direction. The council showed no interest in reopening car access when it met on June 1.
What the city locked in this fall
The closure itself is settled. The City of Palo Alto says the council voted on Nov. 6, 2023 to make the affected parts of California Avenue and Ramona Street permanently car-free, and formally closed them permanently on March 10, 2025.
What changed in 2026 is the set of rules that the full-service model now runs on. On June 1, the council voted 6–1 to adopt parklet standards and outdoor activation rules. Council member George Lu cast the only no vote. The city's own announcement said the car-free block would be repaved on October 1 and 2, and that the new outdoor dining standards would take effect once the work was done.
Under those standards, a restaurant can choose one of three pre-approved structures:
- A roofless parklet
- A cabana with a sloped roof
- A pergola with a flat roof
According to the Palo Alto Ledger, citing a city merchant presentation, each parklet may cover no more than 350 square feet of roof area, and no business may run more than two. Custom designs are still allowed but go through a longer review. The city's Outdoor Dining Program page now hosts a Cal Ave pre-approved parklet guide, an applicant checklist, plans and structural drawings.
Weidanz described the effect in June. Some Cal Ave businesses had been "hesitant to fund high-quality permanent outdoor structures while operating under temporary rules," he said, and the pre-approved designs give them the certainty "to confidently invest their own capital into long-term outdoor spaces." In practice, the rules make a permanent covered room the standard tool on Cal Ave. Only a full-service restaurant can make full use of one.
The same June vote also shaped how people move along the street. Council members directed staff to develop a design with no bicycle access, after residents and merchants raised concerns about e-bikes and motorized bikes mixing with diners. An August agenda packet for the city's Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee records that direction. A street built for slow walking and long meals plays to the same two formats.
The small-footprint end of the block
The other format that works on Cal Ave is the small shop that doesn't need anyone to linger. Its pipeline is where most of this winter's changes are concentrated. As of the most recent local reporting:
- Croissante, 321 California Ave., a bakery known for inventive croissants and pastries, is moving into the former Antonio's Nut House space. A September roundup in The Almanac listed its target opening as late November.
- Backyard Brew, 444 California Ave., is a coffee shop that has been closed since February 2025 over permit issues. Its owner said he hoped to reopen about two months after permits are issued.
- Arsicault Bakery, 388 Cambridge Ave., is one block over rather than on Cal Ave itself. Its Palo Alto location is now listed for early 2027.
All three are morning businesses: pastry and coffee bought at a counter and carried out. Bar Underdog, at 299 California Ave., fits the street in a different way. It is a cocktail bar with a small snack menu from the team behind Protégé, and it held its grand opening on Sept. 18, 2025, according to Palo Alto Online.
A winter week on the block
For residents, these formats add up to a simple routine.
Sunday mornings belong to the California Avenue Farmers Market. Urban Village Farmers' Markets runs it from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the El Camino end of the avenue, every week, year-round, rain or shine. The market and the morning counters serve the same kind of short visit.
Weekday lunches draw from the office crowd near Stanford Research Park. This is the business Square Pie Guys said was working for it.
Evenings belong to the full-service restaurants and their outdoor rooms. A 2022–2023 city survey found that 90% of Cal Ave visitors come for outdoor dining and 67% visit at least once a week, the Palo Alto Ledger reported. Those numbers describe a habit, not just occasional visits, and the new parklet standards are built to support it through the wet months.
The street's events followed the same pattern this year. Thursday Live, the city's free concert series, ran one Thursday a month from May through September. The season closed with a Saturday Halloween and Oktoberfest event on Oct. 31. The May 28 opener brought food, games, a photo booth and two music stages onto the roadway, the kind of evening that restaurants with parklets are built for. For the rest of downtown's dining options, the summer guide to what's new in downtown Palo Alto covers the University Avenue side.
Whatever comes next at 369 California Ave. will open on a street whose rules now favor covered outdoor rooms and quick counter service.
How a street works shapes how buyers see the homes around it, and that is the context we bring to every listing. If you own near California Avenue and want to know how your home's setting and the blocks around it would be presented to buyers, Maria Afzal invites you to request a complimentary luxury marketing consultation. You can also see current numbers in our Palo Alto market report.
