If you have walked Santa Cruz Avenue lately and then wandered over to the Springline block on Oak Grove, you already sense what the numbers confirm: downtown Menlo Park is no longer one place. It is two, with different rules, different foot traffic patterns, and, as of late June, different possibilities for what can open in each.
This is a note for people who already live here, on what changed between April and July of 2026, and where those changes are likely to send your weekend.
The June 23 vote that rewrote what can open on Santa Cruz Avenue
For years the vacancy problem downtown has been visible from the sidewalk. The 2012 El Camino Real/Downtown Specific Plan set narrow use rules along Santa Cruz Avenue to protect a retail-focused streetscape, and the outcome, in Councilmember Drew Combs's words at the June 23 meeting, was that the specific plan has been almost a complete failure at revitalizing Santa Cruz Avenue, with a downtown retail vacancy problem that has persisted for years while rents outpaced what many retailers could afford.
On June 23, 2026, the City Council unanimously approved a scaled-back package of zoning changes. Spas, salons and similar personal service businesses can now operate on the ground floor of Santa Cruz Avenue without a conditional use permit; previously, those uses were generally restricted to upper floors. Small-scale recreation uses, including gyms and arcades, may now apply for use permits to open on the avenue after previously being prohibited, with the Planning Commission retaining approval authority over individual projects. Financial institutions were held to a ceiling: banks, which already account for about 28,000 square feet, will be limited to a total of 30,000 square feet on Santa Cruz Avenue.
The application driving the change came from Windy Hill Ventures, headed by Menlo Park native Tod Spieker. Windy Hill owns and recently renovated 870 Santa Cruz Ave. but said it has struggled to find tenants. Whether or not you have an opinion on the outcome, the practical effect for residents is straightforward: the next tenants on the avenue are more likely to be a Pilates studio, a barre gym, a nail salon, or an arcade than another apparel boutique. The city's own notice on the amendment confirms the changes took effect immediately.
Springline finally filled its last restaurant slot
While Santa Cruz Avenue was working out how to fill emptier storefronts, the Springline block a few minutes' walk away closed out its opening chapter. On June 11, Burma Food Group debuted Alisios at Springline, the final addition to a now full list of restaurant tenants. Alisios sits next to Barebottle Brewing and is a contemporary Mexican restaurant and bar from the team behind Burma Superstar, Burma Love, Teakwood and Kayah, with a menu from executive chef Carlos Villegas and sous chef Renee Gomez drawing on flavors from Oaxaca and Baja. The address is 550E Oak Grove Ave., and the kitchen runs late by Peninsula standards, with dinner service until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
Two months earlier, the former Canteen space was taken over by Causwells. Springline has been steadily bringing a host of San Francisco-based eateries to the Peninsula, including Andytown Coffee Roasters, Barebottle Brewing Co., Burma Love, Che Fico and Proper Food. The Causwells version is not a copy-paste from the Marina. The menu is about 75% new per chef-owner Adam Rosenblum, and co-owner Elmer Mejicanos is using the space, twice the size of the SF original, to add a martini cart. The 50-seat art deco room features peacock-print wallpaper, sage green velvet chairs, and brushed gold hardware, with a garage roll-up wall that opens to seat an additional 60 outdoors.
Read together, the Alisios and Causwells openings tell you what Springline is now: a fully-tenanted, San Francisco-import evening block that closes the roster it started assembling years ago.
Santa Cruz Avenue's own comeback stories
Springline is the tidy narrative. The messier one, and in some ways the more interesting one, is happening on the avenue and just off it.
Take Shiok! Singapore Kitchen. Since 1999, Shiok! served traditional Singaporean dishes out of 1137 Chestnut St., a business Dennis Lim's sister started after moving from Singapore and cooking at home for friends before opening a small restaurant in San Carlos. When the Chestnut Street building was sold, Shiok!, along with other tenants including Gerry's Cakes, was forced to leave by the new owner by Jan. 1, 2025, and Lim looked for a new location to avoid laying off staff. Since the closure, Shiok! had been operating as a delivery and takeout restaurant from a ghost kitchen in Redwood City. In April 2026 it reopened on Oak Grove Avenue with the same kitchen staff and the same recipes. The Chestnut Street building, meanwhile, still sits boarded up.
A block or so away, another new arrival brought Michelin credentials to the avenue proper. Yeobo, Darling opened at 827 Santa Cruz Ave. from chefs Meichih and Michael Kim, whose Michelin-starred Maum in Palo Alto and Los Altos street-fare spot Bao Bei preceded it, blending Meichih's Taiwanese and Michael's Korean roots.
Put these next to the zoning vote and a pattern emerges. The avenue's most successful new arrivals are still restaurants, but the city has now acknowledged that restaurants alone will not fill it. The next Yeobo, Darling might be a spin studio.
Evenings on El Camino: the Guild's late-summer stretch
Any weekend plan that starts with dinner at Springline or Yeobo, Darling has a natural second act two blocks away at the Guild Theatre, 949 El Camino Real. The late-summer through early-fall calendar is unusually deep this year:
- Aug 6 — Bad Nerves
- Aug 14 — Cowboy Mouth
- Aug 15 — a Guild Theatre show, 8 p.m.
- Aug 17 — Cat Power
- Aug 21, 22, 28 — Guild Theatre shows, 8 p.m.
- Sep 23 — Tommy Emmanuel
- Sep 26 — The Airborne Toxic Event
- Oct 1 — Geoff Tate's Operation: Mindcrime, The Final Chapter
- Oct 2 — John Oates
- Oct 3 — Killer Queen
- Oct 4 — Hardly Strictly Out of the Park: Kathleen Edwards
- Oct 9 — Pink Talking Fish
- Dec 31 — New Year's Eve with Molly Tuttle
The Guild is a nonprofit venue, and the room is small enough that it changes how you plan the evening. Reviewers routinely single out the sound system, and the door-to-show window is short: doors typically open at 7 p.m. for an 8 p.m. show. If you are eating first, you have a defined runway, and both Springline and the Oak Grove restaurants are close enough to walk from.
A Sunday routine that hasn't changed
Amid all the churn, one part of the downtown week is exactly what it was ten years ago. The Menlo Park Farmers Market opened in 1992, is sponsored by the Menlo Park Live Oak Lions Club, and channels the money back into the community, with extra produce distributed at the end of the market to feed the homeless. It runs Sundays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., in the Chestnut Street parking lot between Santa Cruz and Menlo Avenues, year-round. Bring your knives to be sharpened on the first Sunday of each month.
The market's location matters more than usual right now. It sits directly across from the block of Chestnut where Shiok! used to be, and one block from the 600 block of Santa Cruz Avenue that since 2023 the City Council has kept partially closed to eastbound traffic between Curtis and Doyle streets, to allow for enhanced outdoor communal space and outdoor dining opportunities for restaurants adjacent to the closure. On a Sunday you can park once, work the market, walk the closed block for a coffee, and cover most of what has changed downtown in a single loop.
What all of this actually means for a Menlo Park weekend
If you have lived here more than a couple of years, the shift is worth stating plainly. Downtown Menlo Park now operates on two clocks. Springline is a compressed, restaurant-forward evening zone with a full tenant list and a defined identity. Santa Cruz Avenue is a longer, slower revival, still anchored by restaurants like Yeobo, Darling and returnees like Shiok!, but with a wider band of possible next tenants after June 23.
For a summer weekend, that suggests a simple template. Saturday night belongs to Springline or the Guild. Sunday belongs to the farmers market, the 600-block closure, and whatever storefront on Santa Cruz Avenue has quietly changed hands since the last time you looked. Give it six months, and the block you walk past on the way to Kepler's may not be the same block at all.
If you own a home in Menlo Park and are curious what these downtown patterns mean for the way your particular block trades, or if you are simply thinking a year or two ahead, Adela Gildo-Mazzon is glad to talk. Request a Confidential Home Valuation whenever the timing is right for you.
