The last weekend of Live on the Avenue lands on September 12. So does the next Historical Walking Tour. Both start at Creek Park. One is ending a twelve-week run of free Friday and Saturday concerts that closed the street from 4:30 to 9:30 in the evening since June 20. The other is doing what it does on the second Saturday of nearly every month: gathering a small group at 9 a.m. to walk the same three blocks and talk about the railroad junction that built the town in the first place.
That overlap is a coincidence of scheduling. What is not a coincidence is who has spent this year buying, renovating, and reopening the buildings those two events pass by.
Three New Names on One Old Street
Start with the one everyone in town already has an opinion about. Tụ Tập opened July 29 at 625 San Anselmo Ave, in the space that used to be Kientz Hall, with a rooftop bar that looks straight at Mount Tamalpais. The chef, Justine Kelly, grew up in San Anselmo and spent 18 years working under Charles Phan at the Slanted Door before co-founding the meal kit company Sun Basket. Her business partner, Bill Upson, runs the Real Restaurants group behind Bix in San Francisco and Buckeye Roadhouse and Picco here in Marin. Co-owner Adam Block lives in town and told the San Francisco Chronicle it felt like a homecoming.
A few blocks toward Red Hill Shopping Center, Pretti Platters opened May 19 in the space that used to hold Auryn Thai Cuisine. It's the work of four friends who bonded over their shared Thai heritage nearly two decades ago and finally decided to build something together, according to reporting in the Press Democrat. Co-owner Fah Intapura brought in a chef friend with fine-dining credentials to build a menu that runs from brunch staples to a bone-in heritage pork chop and Kaluga Reserve caviar with housemade roti, which is a strange and delightful thing to find near a strip mall.
Then there's the one that actually stings a little if you grew up here. Hilda's Coffee Shop served German-style pancakes and diner classics at 639 San Anselmo Ave from 1960 until it closed in late 2025, after passing from founder Tor Nielsen to Darleen and Brian Young in 1978 and then to their daughter Sue Kirton in 2006. The building had never been brought up to modern code. Pat Townsley, who owns Creekside Pizza & Taproom a few doors down, bought the business and gutted the space for a full remodel. As he put it, the building was substandard in every way and would never have passed inspection today. The plan is to keep the pancakes, keep Hilda's longtime chef, and add a nighttime menu with hot chicken sandwiches and soft serve under a new name that hasn't gone public yet. It was supposed to reopen before Live on the Avenue started in June. As of Creekside's own most recent update, the target has slipped to September.
The Thread Nobody's Advertising
Here's what the three stories have in common that a quick scroll through a restaurant roundup would miss: none of these are outside operators parachuting into a cute town to cash in on it. Kelly grew up here. Block lives here. Townsley already owns the pizza place three doors down and is spending his own money and months of permitting delays to save the diner his neighbors grew up eating breakfast at. Pretti Platters is four friends who wanted to open something together, not a concept tested elsewhere and franchised in.
That distinction matters more this year than it would in a normal one. A few miles away in Larkspur, Vine Hospitality shut down operations across its restaurant group, including the longtime favorite Left Bank, a casualty of the same labor costs, rent increases, and food costs squeezing full-service dining rooms across the county. San Anselmo is watching that happen next door while three of its own operators are doing the opposite: buying buildings, gutting kitchens, and betting years of permitting headaches are worth it. That's not the story you'd get from a "new restaurants in Marin" listicle. It's the story you get from paying attention to who's actually signing the leases.
It helps that the town already had proof this works. Chef Ron Siegel's Madcap, also in San Anselmo, earned a 2026 Michelin star this year, the kind of recognition that doesn't happen by accident and doesn't happen to towns without a real dining culture underneath the tourist-friendly surface.
What Ends September 12, What Doesn't
Live on the Avenue closes out its run on that date after starting June 20, with no show over the July 4 weekend. For twelve weekends, San Anselmo Avenue turned into a pedestrian promenade from 6 to 8:30 p.m., restaurants spilling onto the sidewalk and Creek Park and Town Hall Plaza both hosting free live music. When it ends, the street closures end with it.
What doesn't end is the Historical Walking Tour, which runs on its own separate, older rhythm. Led by members of the San Anselmo Historical Commission, including longtime docent Dick Miner, the free tour departs Creek Park on the second Saturday of the month and covers the same historic Hub where two dirt roads met before the North Pacific Coast Railroad arrived in 1874 and split the line toward the coast and toward San Rafael. The next two dates are September 12 and October 10. So the same Saturday the town closes out its loudest, newest tradition, it also keeps its quietest, oldest one running exactly on schedule. If you've never taken the tour, the overlap is as good an excuse as any.
The Plaza Vote That Won't Change Anything Yet
On August 11, the San Anselmo Town Council voted unanimously to move forward with the final design for Creek Park Plaza, a project locals have taken to calling BB2 after years of public meetings, design contests, and delayed decisions. It's a real milestone after what the town's own account describes as years of community input, planning, due diligence, delays, and more delays.
Here's the part worth knowing if you live near the park: nothing physically changes this year. Construction on the plaza won't start until summer 2027, according to Creekside's own tracking of the vote. The approval is a real turning point in the town's planning process, but if you're walking past Creek Park this fall expecting fences or dust, you won't find any yet. What you will find is a town that just made a decision on a project it spent years arguing about, in the same season three of its most-watched restaurant projects are finally opening their doors.
None of these threads, on their own, would be much of a story. A restaurant opening is just a restaurant opening. A council vote on a park redesign is just a vote. But taken together, on the same three blocks, in the same few months, they say something specific about who's deciding what San Anselmo becomes next. It isn't a chain, an out-of-town investor, or a developer with no history here. It's a chef who grew up three blocks from her own restaurant, a pizza place owner spending his own capital to keep a 65-year-old diner's pancakes on the menu, and a town council that spent years listening to its own residents before voting on a park. That's a different story than the one most towns this size get to tell.
If you're the kind of San Anselmo resident who tracks these things because you actually live here and plan to keep living here, that's exactly the kind of local read Ruth Linn keeps close watch on too, whether it's a new restaurant on the avenue or the market shifts underneath it. Reach out anytime you want the fuller picture of what's changing in town, no pressure, no forms to fill out first.
