The Promenade on Forest Is Permanent: What Changed on Laguna's Downtown Block, and How to Spend Its First Hospitality Night There

"You go to the Playhouse, you're in seating," Mayor Mark Orgill told the Daily Pilot the day after the Promenade on Forest's official opening. "You go to the Cultural Arts Center, you're primarily seated. It's a different experience. At the promenade, you can listen to music and you can socialize at the same time."

The brick plaza on lower Forest Avenue is now the permanent version of something Laguna Beach has been trying out since June 2020. Officials scheduled its dedication for the start of the quiet season on purpose. The first real test of whether the plaza works as a place for locals comes in the next few weeks, and the biggest of those tests is Hospitality Night on Friday, December 4.

An opening timed for the off-season

The ribbon-cutting took place on September 25, under a full moon, in front of more than 500 people, the Laguna Beach Independent reported. Orgill told the paper the timing was deliberate. "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."

The idea is older than the pandemic. At the ceremony, Orgill pointed back 27 years to Vision Laguna 2030, a community planning effort in which about 2,000 residents mapped out the town's future. That document called for closing Forest Avenue to cars and creating a downtown social space. "When COVID came, it gave us an opportunity to close the street and give us an experiment of what it would be like," he said, according to the Independent.

The mayor told the Orange County Register that groups were already using the plaza that way: reading circles, high school students who talked about meeting there, and others. "It's becoming a place where people see others they might not run into in a year," he said.

Sculptor Gerard Basil Stripling gave the Independent a one-word version of the same idea. "I have always felt that every city should have a piazza, and this is now our piazza."

What replaced the street

The plaza covers Forest Avenue from Glenneyre Street down to Coast Highway. The roadway, curbs, sidewalks and parking spaces are gone. In their place is a brick promenade with art and seating areas.

Here is what's on the block now, according to the City of Laguna Beach project page and the Register's coverage:

• Paving: rustic tumbled brick across the plaza
• Fountain: a centerpiece inspired by kelp forests
• Seating and art: specialty furniture, more art pieces, a nautilus bench and bike racks
• Trees: two specimen oaks and ten 48-inch-box eucalyptus
• Infrastructure: trench drains, storm drain systems, bollards, light poles, umbrellas, and conduit for audio and electrical

City Manager Dave Kiff told the Register that the decomposed granite used in construction should help with drainage. He said the new landscaping is better suited to a "saline" environment than the unstable and ailing eucalyptus trees that were removed over the summer.

The money tells the same story about ambition. The temporary plaza that opened in June 2020 cost about $250,000, security included. The permanent version cost $7.2 million, which Kiff said came in under budget. Of that, $5.5 million was the construction contract the City Council awarded to Superb Engineering in January. In other words, the city paid close to 30 times the cost of the pandemic experiment to make it permanent, and it chose plantings that need years to mature. "The trees will grow. It's going to be more beautiful over time," Orgill said at the dedication.

Not everyone wanted the change. Some in the community opposed the permanent plaza, arguing that it reduces parking, takes away from the town's historic character and could make flooding worse, the Register reported. On the other side, Orgill pointed out that the California Coastal Commission approved the project unanimously.

The block's anchors are its oldest tenants

Laguna's newest public space held its first party alongside two of the block's longest-running businesses. Bushard's Pharmacy has sat in the same building on Forest Avenue since Joseph Bushard and his brother Earl opened it in 1946. It turns 80 this year and has never been remodeled. Moulin, the Parisian-style café a few doors down, turned 10. The two businesses held their anniversary celebrations on the same evening as the ribbon-cutting, with free French crepes from Moulin and a raffle of Bushard's gift baskets.

Bushard's is now run by Marisa Fader, the founder's granddaughter, who told the Register she is taking over the business side as her mother, Sheila Bushard-Jamison, heads toward retirement. Fader said the pharmacy was always meant to be a place where people know each other and catch up while picking up essentials. That is close to the way the mayor describes the plaza. Many of the specialty items the store stocks come from France and are hard to find elsewhere in the United States. She said that since July, when part of the new promenade near Coast Highway was unveiled, she has seen many more people walking and lounging in the space.

Here is who lines the block, by address, based on Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce listings and Visit Laguna Beach:

Hospitality Night puts the plaza to its first big test

The city's summer music series on the Promenade stage ran Friday through Sunday evenings from July 10 to August 30. In the off-season, the plaza works as Orgill described it: tables, umbrellas, the fountain and whoever happens to be there. Hospitality Night is the first time the town's biggest resident gathering will use the permanent plaza as a stage.

The city and the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce jointly host the event on the first Friday of each December. This year that's Friday, December 4, from about 5 to 9 p.m. Here is the city's tentative schedule:

The schedule splits the evening between two places. The early part centers on the Peppertree Lot, also called Lot 2, with the tree lighting and the band, which plays there until 7:30. From 6:30 on, Forest Avenue picks up a second track. The Promenade's main stage carries the last two hours of music, while Santa's Beach House and the business open houses keep going until 9. If you're coming with children, one practical order is crafts and the tree lighting first, then dinner or a crepe on Forest, then the Main Stage set.

Because street closures start at 3 p.m., anyone driving downtown that afternoon will meet barricades well before the crowds arrive. The free trolley and on-demand service run from 4 to 11 p.m., and the city's page links to a closure map worth checking that week.

Between now and December 4

Two other events this season pair well with a stop on Forest.

Laguna Art Museum's Art + Nature Celebration Week runs November 5 through 9. During the week, Kim Manfredi's A Flag Walk for Our Future sets out four groups of hand-painted, hand-gilded flags along a 0.7-mile coastal route from Main Beach through Heisler Park. It's free and open from 8:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day. On Saturday, November 7, the museum hosts free art activities in the cobblestone area at Main Beach from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and admission to the museum is free from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Inside, Manfredi's exhibition View with a Grain of Sand runs through January 18, 2027. Main Beach sits at the Coast Highway end of the Promenade, so it's a short walk from the flag route to a table at the fountain.

Sawdust Winter Fantasy opens November 20 and runs for five Friday-to-Sunday weekends through December 20, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. That puts its third weekend on Hospitality Night, so you could spend the afternoon of December 4 in the canyon and the evening downtown.

If the Pacific Marine Mammal Center's reopening is on your list too, our Laguna Canyon guide covers it. More on daily life in town is on our Laguna Beach neighborhood page.

If you own a home within walking distance of Forest Avenue, a permanent plaza is now part of what buyers will see when they visit. The Coche Group can show you how recent downtown sales reflect it. Find out what buyers will pay.