Downtown Laguna Has a New Piazza and a Surf Museum. Here's the Right Week to Visit Each.

"We thought that it was an appropriate time to do the ribbon cutting and announce the grand opening of the promenade before we get into the fall and winter months where we start to have hospitality night and some of the other events," Mayor Mark Orgill told the Laguna Beach Independent at the Sept. 25 dedication of the Promenade on Forest. By then the plaza had been finished for more than a month.

The city scheduled the opening for the calendar. The Surfing Heritage and Culture Center, which opened its new Broadway home a few days earlier, now runs on a calendar too, and right now that calendar works against the casual drop-in visit. Downtown Laguna gained two public places this fall. The dates tell you when each one is easiest to enjoy.

Twenty-Seven Years to Get a Piazza

The promenade started long before its pandemic-era tables. Orgill told the Independent that the Vision 2030 plan named a downtown social space on Forest Avenue 27 years ago. He said the COVID closure "gave us an opportunity to close the street and give us an experiment of what it would be like." He also said more than 2,000 people took part in the community visioning process, and the California Coastal Commission approved the project unanimously.

The permanent version closes lower Forest Avenue to cars from Glenneyre Street to Coast Highway. The Daily Pilot reported that the City Council awarded Superb Engineering a $5.5 million construction contract in January, and the full conversion is estimated at $7.3 million. Days before the ceremony, City Manager Dave Kiff told the council that full electrical service, which runs a fountain, an audio system and Wi-Fi, was expected to be finished that week. The city's project materials describe public seating and dining, space for temporary performances, and wider walkways in front of the shops.

Two long-standing businesses on the block used the dedication to mark their own milestones. Bushard's Pharmacy celebrated 80 years and Moulin celebrated 10, with a shared birthday cake at the ceremony. Diners filled the tables at Alessa that evening while the 133 Band played after the ribbon-cutting.

In the Daily Pilot's coverage, Orgill explained what makes the plaza different from the town's other venues. "You go to the [Laguna] Playhouse, you're in seating," he said. "At the promenade, you can listen to music and you can socialize at the same time. You could be at one of the restaurants." Local sculptor Gerard Basil Stripling put it more simply in the Independent: "every city should have a piazza, and this is now our piazza."

The city's posted live-music series on the promenade stage ran Fridays through Sundays from July 10 to Aug. 30, 2026. No music calendar has been posted for late fall. Between now and early December, the promenade is mostly an everyday space for coffee at Moulin, an errand at Bushard's or dinner at Alessa. Its first large scheduled event comes in December.

One Block Over, a Museum That Opened Into a Film Festival

The second project took 27 years as well. Founder Dick Metz, 97, formed the nonprofit behind SHACC 27 years ago, according to the Independent's opening coverage. The collection spent about 20 years in an industrial building in San Clemente, where much of it stayed out of public view. Metz said the 1939 building downtown was a rare find because of its high ceilings, size, parking and short walk to the beach.

The Orange County Register gives the museum's address as 239 Broadway St. SHACC's visitor page lists 232 Ocean Ave. as its parking lot and main entrance. Admission is free. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and closed Mondays.

The galleries are laid out as a timeline. Surfboards line the outer walls and trace the sport from Hawaii through changes in board materials, from redwood and pine to balsa, foam and the boards surfers ride today. Rows through the middle cover competition, surf shops, fashion, film and music, and waves and oceanography. Upstairs are a library and archive. The best-known pieces are five boards that belonged to Duke Kahanamoku. Metz told the Independent that only eight boards are known to have been made or ridden by Kahanamoku, and called the five at SHACC "the crown jewels."

The first rotating exhibit is "PAE KA NALU: Catch the Wave." It follows Hawaiian surfing from ancient times to the watermen who carried it abroad. SHACC historian Chris Mauro, a former Surfer magazine editor, told the Independent he spent five years working with Hawaiian historians on it and called the exhibit "a big thank you to Hawaii for giving us this sport."

The building is also the reason SHACC's calendar matters this month. Through Sunday, Oct. 25, the museum is open only to Coast Film Festival ticket holders. The Coast Film & Music Festival runs Oct. 16 through 25, with an opening screening at Rivian South Coast Theater, according to Stu News Laguna. SHACC's Oct. 24 conversation with Cory Richards also falls inside that ticket-holder window.

The Dates That Open Downtown Back Up

From the day this post goes up, here is the sequence:

1. Sunday, Oct. 25. The festival's last day and the end of SHACC's ticket-holder-only access.
2. Tuesday, Oct. 27. The museum's first regular public day after the festival, since it is closed Mondays.
3. Thursday, Oct. 29. The Jeff Divine book launch at SHACC, 7 to 9:30 p.m. As of now it is the last event on the museum's calendar.
4. Friday, Dec. 4. Hospitality Night, the promenade's first holiday-season event as a permanent plaza.
5. Fall 2027. Planned start of construction on the next downtown street project.

Late October and November are the open stretch. The festival will have left SHACC, the holiday crowds won't have arrived on Forest, and the museum's weekday hours are the easiest time to see the Kahanamoku boards without a crowd.

Dec. 4 Is the Promenade's First Real Test

The city describes Hospitality Night as a block party held on the first Friday of every December, sponsored jointly by the city and the Chamber of Commerce. This year it runs from about 5 to 9 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 4. The tentative schedule splits the evening between two places:

The Peppertree Lot schedule is family-oriented, with the Thurston Middle School Band, the Ukulele Academy, holiday crafts until 7:30 p.m., and the Laguna Community Concert and Jazz Band after the tree lighting. The Laguna Beach Presbyterian Art Market, with La Playa Tamales, cookies and cider, runs from 5 to 7 p.m. From 6:30 p.m. the evening shifts to the Forest Avenue main stage, and the headline sets that follow from 7 to 9 p.m. are the new promenade's first major holiday show.

The street closures matter if you drive downtown that afternoon. Starting at 3 p.m., parts of Forest Avenue, Ocean Avenue, Beach Street, Glenneyre and the Peppertree Parking Lot close to cars, and the city publishes a closure map on the same page. With the free trolley and on-demand service running from 4 to 11 p.m., leaving the car at home is the simplest option.

Next Up: Ocean Avenue and Beach Street

The two new places sit about a block apart, and the city's next downtown project covers the streets between them. The Downtown Action Plan implementation project covers Ocean Avenue from Forest Avenue to Coast Highway and Beach Street from Broadway to Ocean Avenue. Plans call for curb bump-outs, a wider sidewalk on Beach Street, sidewalk replacement and minor drainage work.

SHACC's main entrance is on Ocean Avenue and its museum address is on Broadway, so the next round of sidewalk work is the walk between the promenade and the surf museum. The city's October 2026 schedule set a public meeting on the project for Oct. 20. The same schedule plans construction for fall 2027 and gives no completion date. Until then, the blocks around the promenade and SHACC stay as they are.

If you want to talk through what the new promenade and museum mean for life in downtown Laguna, or how the blocks around them are changing, Nick Lombardo is glad to share what he's seeing. Let's Connect.