For close to two decades, the block behind Burlingame Avenue was a municipal parking lot. On April 2, 2026, Mayor Michael Brownrigg and the council cut a ribbon on the one-acre space that replaced it, and the geography of downtown shifted. Not in a way that shows up on a map. In a way that only becomes obvious once you walk it.
August is the first full summer month in which that shift is legible at street level. The Town Square is programmed almost every weekend, four ground-floor tenants at 220 Park have opened within a mile-marker of each other, and the annual Burlingame on the Avenue festival on August 15 and 16 will land on top of all of it. If you have lived here a while and haven't wandered between Park Road and Lorton in a few months, the block will not look the way you remember it.
The block that reoriented itself in five months
The Square sits between Park Road and Lorton Avenue on the parcel the city called Lot E. Designed by SWA Group at a cost of $6.4 million, it was funded jointly by the City of Burlingame and the developers of the adjacent 220 Park office complex. The Park Road half holds flexible open space and a small performance area sized for markets and outdoor concerts; the Lorton Avenue half features communal tables and outdoor games oriented toward the restaurant retail below 220 Park. After dark, theater-grade projectors wash the main walkway with a light installation drawn from the course of Burlingame Creek, now running underground below the site.
The point is not the amenity. The point is what the amenity turned on. Sweetgreen opened at 235 Lorton Ave in early 2026 as part of the 220 Park retail buildout, and has already become a midday anchor for the office tenants above — Confluent, Upstart, SkyKnight Capital, and Industrious co-working all occupy floors in the fully leased 185,000-square-foot tower. Local Kitchens, at 225 Lorton Ave, is the more interesting addition: a culinary collective founded in Cupertino in 2020 that runs multiple chef-driven menus simultaneously from names like Alvin Cailan, Rick Martínez, and Einat Admony. The Burlingame location is the brand's thirteenth outpost and its first on the Peninsula. A short walk toward Primrose, Amado opened in January 2026 to a ribbon-cutting that the Downtown Burlingame BID described as the neighborhood's most anticipated opening in recent memory, and Trad Bone Broth from brothers Jonathan and David Kim fills the daytime end of the spectrum.
Five months ago, none of this was a coherent stretch. It was a parking lot and some office construction. Now it is a district with a lunch counter, a multi-concept dinner room, a full-service evening restaurant, a wellness spot, and a public space stitching them together.
A Saturday afternoon, mapped
The most useful thing about a downtown with a center of gravity is that a walk between errands stops feeling like a walk between errands. A rough sequence for a Saturday in August, using only what already exists:
- Coffee and a slow start at one of the Burlingame Avenue anchors, then a stop at Mollie Stone's for picnic groceries if the Square looks like a good place to eat.
- Pottery painting with kids at All Fired Up on Lorton Avenue, which sits within sight of the Square's game side.
- Lunch at Local Kitchens or a bowl at Sweetgreen, carried to the communal tables under the London plane trees.
- A stop at B Street Books, the used bookstore Lew Cohen opened on Burlingame Avenue on May 30 after running the store in San Mateo for 16 years and moving to escape rising rent.
- Something cold on the way back — soft serve at Buena's, boba at Sunright Tea Studio or Ume Tea, or a juice from Déjà Vu on the Avenue or Sidewalk Juice on Park Road.
- Dinner at Amado if the day earns it, or a communal-table night with something from the 220 Park stack.
None of these places are new to a resident individually. What is new is the routing. Before April, a Saturday like that meant driving between errands or looping back on the Avenue. Now the loop has a middle.
What August 15 and 16 is actually testing
Burlingame on the Avenue returns for its 30th year on Saturday and Sunday, August 15 and 16, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Last year's event drew 65,000 attendees over two days, and the Chamber's sponsorship materials suggest they are planning for a larger turnout. The 2026 program includes the Wheels Through Time car show on the Avenue, with judging from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and the winner announced at 4 p.m.
The interesting question is not whether the festival will fill the street. It always fills the street. The question is what the Square adds to a weekend that has run without it for 29 years. The Burlingame Voice framed it plainly a few weeks after the ribbon-cutting, arguing that Burlingame on the Avenue in August is when the new space gets what the writer called its real debut. That framing is fair. A grand-opening ceremony in April with champagne and a silent disco is a soft launch. A summer festival where 60,000-plus people walk within a block of the Square, with restaurants at 220 Park open and running, is the first stress test of whether the district holds together as designed.
Worth watching during the weekend: how much of the crowd routes through the Lorton side of the Square between Avenue booths and the food court, and whether the elevated dining terraces above the retail get used the way the plan imagined. Those terraces are the physical hinge between the Square and the buildings that face it. If they are quiet during the festival, the district's daytime program will still work but the evening one will not fully arrive until the Bacchus restaurant opens in the old post office.
The rest of August, and the calendar past it
Between the festival weekend and Labor Day, the Square is not sitting empty. The Downtown BID has been posting monthly programming since June — salsa nights, live music, arts and crafts sessions — and July already brought Circus Bella's "AH HA!" free family performance to the Square, with acrobats, aerialists, jugglers, clowns, and a live six-piece band at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturday, July 25. Expect a similar cadence through August into fall.
A few dates already on the downtown calendar worth putting in a phone:
- Burlingame on the Avenue: August 15 and 16, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Burlingame Avenue closed to traffic
- Downtown Burlingame Wine Walk: July 30, 30 local businesses each pouring their favorite wine alongside appetizers and live music
- Fall Fest: October 25
- Winterfest and Holiday Kids Train: December 4
Music programming at the Square will continue as long as weather cooperates, and the smart move for anyone who cares is to check the Downtown Burlingame BID's event calendar the week of, because start times have shifted — the Burlingame Voice noted in May that a scheduled 5 p.m. set actually began at 5:30 despite the band being set up early.
What's still missing, and why it matters
Two things are absent from the Square right now, and both are worth naming because they explain why August will feel like a threshold rather than a finish line.
The first is a stage. The Square as built has no bandstand or raised platform. Musicians perform at grade, which flattens the audience experience and makes sight lines difficult once a crowd forms. It is a fixable problem and one the community is already talking about publicly.
The second is the anchor restaurant. Bacchus Management Group signed a ten-year lease to convert the restored 1941 Art Deco post office at 220 Park into an 8,000-square-foot restaurant with an outdoor dining terrace that will face directly onto the new square. Bacchus is the group behind The Village Pub in Woodside, Selby's in Atherton, and Michelin-starred Spruce in San Francisco. The concept is full-service, white tablecloth, and has been shaped partly by listening tours through Hillsborough and Burlingame to understand what residents who already have access to good restaurants actually want. An opening in fall 2026 has been reported, though a specific date has not been announced.
Until that restaurant opens, the Square is a two-thirds finished district: strong at lunch, growing at dinner, still short its evening anchor. August is the last month before that changes. If you have been meaning to walk the block and see what has happened, this is the summer to do it, because the version of downtown you see in August will not be the version you see in December.
If you have been thinking about what your home might be worth as this stretch of downtown fills in, or you are simply curious how the Peninsula market is behaving this season, Sheryl Bursley is happy to talk it through and provide a free home valuation whenever you are ready.
