Ask a longtime Corona del Mar resident what makes a summer here feel like a summer here, and the answer usually starts with Sherman Library & Gardens and ends somewhere along Pacific Coast Highway with a glass of wine. This year the middle of that sentence looks different. Sherman is in its 60th anniversary year and mid-reimagining, the 3rd Thursdays street celebration has quietly moved to a three-times-a-year rhythm, and a full farm-to-table restaurant relaunch at the gardens is still more than a year away. The village is not standing still. It is running on a slightly new clock, and knowing the clock is the difference between catching the season and missing it.
Sherman is 2.2 acres in transition, not a static garden
The two-and-a-bit acres tucked behind the wall at 2647 E. Coast Highway have been part of the village since 1955, when Arnold Haskell bought the old Norman's Nursery property and named the library and gardens after his mentor M. H. Sherman. This summer marks the property's 60th anniversary as the Sherman, and a large portion of the grounds is fenced off for a full reimagining, with the guest entrance temporarily moved to the corner of Dahlia.
If you have not walked in since spring, plan for a shorter, more curated loop than the one you remember. The rose beds, the Succulent Garden with its California pepper tree, and the tropical collections are still doing what they do, but the footprint you can access is smaller and the sightlines are new.
The set piece for the season is outdoors and worth the $5 admission on its own. Sherman's annual summer art installation, running under the title Dog Days of Sherman, features six larger-than-life mixed-media sculptures by Elizabeth Laul Healey, an artist who splits her time between Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar and has fabricated more than 250 of these pieces to date. It is an open-air exhibit sized for the current, smaller footprint, which is the point. The garden is showing you what it can still do in transition.
The bigger news is what is not open yet. Sherman has confirmed a new restaurant partner for the fully reimagined, farm-to-table dining program, but the debut is scheduled for Fall 2027. In the meantime, the on-site tea program has become the way to sample the new hospitality direction: Hazeltine's Afternoon Tea is running as a series of scheduled experiences through 2026, reservation only. If you have been waiting for the right occasion to bring a visiting friend inside the walls, that is the occasion.
A working thesis for the summer: the village is not fewer things this year. It is fewer chances at the same things, which makes the calendar matter more than it used to.
Third Thursdays are no longer monthly, and that changes the walk
For years the shorthand for a village night out was simply "Third Thursday." The event, presented by The File Group in partnership with Visit Newport Beach, the Corona del Mar Chamber, and Greet Corona del Mar Magazine, still turns the business district into a walkable street party from 5 to 8 p.m., with pop-ups, live music under the Marguerite Clock Tower, restaurant specials, and a passport that racks up points for rewards. What has changed is the cadence.
In 2026, 3rd Thursdays runs only three times: April 16, July 16, and October 15. That is it. The July edition has already come and gone. If you missed it, October 15 is your last chance for the year to catch the version of PCH where El Ranchito is running happy hour on the sidewalk, Five Crowns has live music at the door, Rothschild's brings out a DJ, SCAPE Gallery opens up an Annex show, and Berkshire Hathaway hosts a dog selfie station and welcome table with the event maps.
A monthly cadence let you be casual about it. Three nights a year is a different math. Put October 15 in the calendar now, and treat July's edition as the reference point for what to plan for: pinch-me bands, pickleball pop-ups, and roughly seventy participating businesses along a walkable stretch of PCH.
The daily version of the village is still the best version
Between the tentpole nights, the everyday map is what most residents actually live in. Working east along PCH from the Sherman gate, that map has more depth than any single visit reveals.
For a stop-in coffee before the gardens, Grounded Coffee and Kit Coffee are the two most reliable morning benches. Rendez Vous French Bakery and Cafe and Rose Bakery Cafe cover the pastry-and-a-croissant lane, and Zinc Cafe & Market is the quiet lunch that never leaves a rotation. Gelato Del Mar is what you walk toward when the marine layer finally burns off in the afternoon.
Lunch and dinner is where the village earns its reputation as one of Orange County's densest small dining strips. Bandera, part of the Hillstone group at 3201 E. Coast Highway, is still doing rotisserie chicken over hardwood in a stone oven and still has one of the more reliable bar seats on the street. Five Crowns, an English country inn replica that has been in business since 1965, remains the special-occasion default, with its gastropub SideDoor attached for the shorter, less-formal version of the same evening. CdM Restaurant at 2325 E. Coast Highway runs a creative American menu under executive chef Elvis Morales and keeps a downstairs speakeasy that takes no password and, technically, no reservations, though a phone call helps. Rothschild's covers the Italian side. Foretti's CdM, under Thaddeus Foret's ownership since a change in leadership, is still working from the original recipes of the namesake chef. Add Avila's El Ranchito, The Quiet Woman, El Cholo, Mayur Cuisine of India, and Bungalow and you have covered most of what a summer week actually looks like.
None of this is new information to a fifteen-year resident. What is new is where it sits in the context of the rest of 2026. With the fenced portion of Sherman off the table until later, and 3rd Thursdays down to a single remaining night, the daily village is doing more of the work of summer than it usually does. That is not a bad thing. It is a good reason to pick two blocks of PCH you don't normally walk and put them on a Saturday.
What's on the village calendar between now and next summer
A compact dated list, because the dates are the point:
- July 23, 2026, 5:30 p.m. — CdM Chamber summer sunset networking mixer at Rothschild's, open to residents who want the local business room, not just the members.
- August 13, 2026, 8:00 a.m. — Chamber morning event, useful for anyone who works from a home office in the village and wants a monthly reason to see neighbors.
- October 15, 2026, 5 to 8 p.m. — The final 3rd Thursday of 2026 along PCH.
- December 6, 2026, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. — The annual Corona del Mar Christmas Walk returns for its next edition, a village institution that has run for more than four decades.
- June 5, 2027, 6:00 a.m. — The 45th Annual CdM Scenic 5K, with exhibit space already being marketed to local businesses.
- Fall 2027 — Sherman's fully reimagined farm-to-table restaurant opens for full dining service under the new partner.
That last date is worth sitting with. When people talk about the village's next chapter, this is roughly the horizon. Between now and then, Hazeltine's tea sessions and the summer art installation are the way inside. After that, the arithmetic of an evening at Sherman changes entirely.
A short read on the block
The mistake to avoid this summer is treating Corona del Mar the way an out-of-town guest would, as a checklist of the obvious. The obvious version of this village is fine. The interesting version is what the calendar is quietly doing underneath: an anchor institution mid-renovation, a signature street event down to three dates a year, and a working restaurant row that is picking up the slack in the middle. Residents who read that pattern correctly will get more out of the next twelve months than the ones who wait for the next Third Thursday flyer.
If you own here and are starting to think about the longer horizon — whether that is a move up the hill, a second home in the desert, or a coastal-to-desert pair — the team at DWA Team is happy to talk through the local picture and how it fits your plans. Search All Homes when you're ready to see what is currently on the market.
