If you live here, you already know the Promenade has been trying to find its second act for a while. What you may not have clocked is how quickly the map of a Santa Monica weekend is being redrawn this summer. The interesting openings are not clustering downtown. They are landing on Montana, on Main, at Colorado Center, and on the sand under the Pier. The events calendar is following the same geography. If you plan a July Saturday the way you planned one in 2022, you are going to miss most of what the city just spent a year building.
Here is what changed, street by street, and how to actually use it.
Montana Avenue is having a moment
Montana has quietly absorbed two of the year's more talked-about openings. The Win~Dow drew crowds around the block when it opened its new Santa Monica location at 930 Montana Ave., taking over a space previously occupied by the Go Get Em Tiger coffee shop, in a 50-seat room designed by the Klein Agency with murals by Los Angeles artist KC Haxton. The Venice original from Paul Hibler and Jeff Goodman has been running since 2019, so this is not an experiment. It is a proven concept moving north of Wilshire.
A few blocks up, Italian gelato brand Bacio di Latte is opening a second Santa Monica location at 1510 Montana Ave., next to Italian market Sogno Toscano. Together, these give the corridor something it has been missing: a walk-up dessert and burger axis that competes with Main Street on its own terms, without the parking friction.
Main Street is trading donuts for dipped ice cream
Main Street's turnover is worth watching because the tenants tell you what the landlords believe about foot traffic. The closure of Holey Grail Donuts at 2441 Main St. has made way for La Diperie, a chain founded in Montreal in 2014 that specializes in dipped ice cream, cakes, donuts and cookies served with a selection of chocolate dips and more than 20 toppings, with more than 65 locations across Canada and into Florida. The Santa Monica outpost would mark the brand's first West Coast location. A Canadian dessert chain choosing Main Street for a West Coast debut says something about how operators are reading the corridor's summer numbers.
Also on Main, Circle Bar, Main Street's most (in)famous dive bar, is back open after a three-year closure thanks to the owners of Hinano Cafe, with the nearly 80-year-old signage and namesake round bar kept intact, plus a larger dance floor, a refreshed drink menu, and daily "Power Hours" with $5 wine and discounted cocktails from 6-7pm.
The Promenade is not dead. It is being retooled.
The Promenade story this summer is not another closure list. It is the arrival of two anchors that will pull very different crowds. Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers cut the ribbon on the Third Street Promenade with Mayor Caroline Torosis in attendance, calling the arrival of the Louisiana-based chain a milestone moment for a downtown that has been working to rebuild commercial momentum. Whatever you think of a chicken-finger chain as urban revitalization, Torosis noted that the new Raising Cane's location is expected to create 100 local jobs and said the timing aligned with a broader burst of civic activity downtown, including a newly opened FIFA store, World Cup festivities and Pride on the Promenade events.
The more interesting Promenade addition is coming later. Gott's will be opening two LA locations in 2026, the first at the Original Farmers Market, then one in Downtown Santa Monica later this summer, best known for burgers topped with things like green chile, griddled mushrooms, or kimchi, but with a full suite of classics like garlic fries, cobb salads, hot dogs, and shakes. That is a NorCal roadside-diner brand with real regional loyalty coming south. If you have ever pulled over in St. Helena for one of their patty melts, you know why locals are paying attention.
The office-park pivot: Colorado Center
The most under-discussed opening of the summer is not on a shopping street at all. A surf-inspired, all-day restaurant and community hub is set to open this summer at Colorado Center, joining a wave of new cafes and casual eateries taking shape across Santa Monica. Bower Santa Monica, spanning approximately 6,500 square feet, will offer food and beverage, health and wellness programming and what its creators describe as "socialization rituals" at the 15-acre office campus at Colorado Center. BXP announced the concept April 15 alongside restaurateur Dave Harper and New School Hospitality. Harper, the founding partner of Amigo Roasters and the restaurateur behind community-focused venues including Bondi Harvest, El Chucho, Palmys and Likeminded Wellness Club, said the restaurant draws its name from Fairy Bower, a break in the Cabbage Tree Bay of Manly Beach in Australia.
Read what BXP is doing here. A publicly traded office landlord is putting 6,500 square feet of a 15-acre campus toward an all-day, wellness-programmed restaurant from a name-brand LA operator. That is not a food-court decision. That is a bet that residents will treat a Class A office lobby as a weekend destination if the coffee is good enough. If it works, expect more of it.
The coffee bench got deeper
Three new caffeine options that most residents have not tried yet:
- Sonia's Café at 1260 15th St. at the corner of Arizona Avenue.
- The vacant corner building at 1231 Wilshire Blvd. will host Vietnamese coffee specialists DOL Coffee House, which currently has a location in Gardena where it also serves boba and desserts.
- Menotti's West LA outpost is equipped with a vintage La Marzocco machine for spot-on flat whites and americanos, plus a few unique drink specials like the West L'Orange with espresso, orange cordial, pistachio milk, and chocolate shavings.
The Pier is doing more work this summer than it has in a decade
Here is the shift that matters most. The city is treating the beach and Pier as programmed venues almost every weekend from June through September, not as passive backdrops. If you have been ignoring the Pier because you assumed it was for tourists, you are missing the point of what the city just built.
The through-line is a partnership push tied to the World Cup and the Olympic runway. The City Council approved partnering with private entities on five major events including the Michelob ULTRA Pitchside Club on Santa Monica Pier in June, timed to the kickoff of the FIFA World Cup 2026; a large-scale music festival adjacent to the Pier and along the sand produced by Goldenvoice in fall 2026; an ESPN fan festival and broadcast presence on the Pier and beach in February 2027; Club France, the official hospitality house of the French Olympic Committee at the Annenberg Community Beach House, for the Olympic Games in summer 2028; and a Santa Monica Nations Village and broadcast center concept led by Hochsitz at Crescent Bay Park during the Olympic Games in summer 2028.
The fall festival is the sleeper. The inaugural festival concept envisions a single-day event with an estimated capacity of 30,000 to 35,000 attendees, with programming including 12 to 15 musical artists, curated food and beverage offerings, festival and artist merchandise, art installations, partnership activations, and guest services. Goldenvoice runs Coachella. A single-day, 30,000-capacity beach show from the same producer, walking distance from your house, is a materially different weekend than watching a sunset from Palisades Park.
The July calendar, in order
| Date | Event | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Through July 19 | Michelob ULTRA Pitchside Club, watch parties and family-friendly events tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup | Santa Monica Pier |
| July 4 | Fourth of July Parade returning to Main Street, plus a new Fourth of July event produced by Revel Republic, marking America's 250th birthday and the 100th anniversary of Route 66 | Main Street |
| July 19 | Santa Monica Block Fest Volume V on the Promenade with a Night Market, spanning from the Promenade and LA Metro stations across to Ocean Park Blvd, Colorado, Arizona, and the Pier for a giant car-free festival | Citywide |
| July 23 | State of the City with live entertainment, kids' activities, food, drinks, and community programming | Ocean Park Branch Library and Main Street |
The July 19 car-free day is the one to circle. A citywide car-free festival that literally reaches from the Metro stations to the Pier is not a block party. It is the closest thing Santa Monica has ever done to a temporary Barcelona.
How to actually use all of this
If you have a Saturday in July and want to see what your city just became, here is a route that uses everything above:
- Coffee on 15th at Sonia's, or a Vietnamese pour at DOL on Wilshire.
- Walk Montana to Bacio di Latte, cut back through the neighborhood to The Win~Dow at 930 Montana for lunch.
- Head to the Pier for the Pitchside Club during a World Cup match.
- Dinner on Main. La Diperie for the cone. Circle Bar for the nightcap.
- On July 19, skip step one through four and walk the whole city instead.
When the neighborhood changes, the market notices
The reason a summer calendar matters to a real estate professional is not the calendar itself. It is what a Goldenvoice partnership, a rooftop ballroom at the Hyatt Centric Delfina Santa Monica's $16 million renovation that updated all 315 guestrooms with a coastal color palette and introduced more than 15,000 square feet of versatile meeting and event space, with a 4,526-square-foot Delfina Ballroom as Santa Monica's only rooftop ballroom overlooking the Pacific Ocean, accommodating 400 guests, and a BXP-anchored wellness restaurant say together about who is putting capital into this coastline over the next three years. Buyers pay attention to those signals a beat before sellers do.
If you already own here and are curious what the last twelve months of openings and partnerships have done to values on your specific block, or you are thinking about a move up or down within Santa Monica, Laila Merchant would be glad to sit down for a consultation and walk you through what the data shows. Schedule a conversation or request a home valuation any time.
