If you drove past Menke Park in April, you saw the fencing go up along Redwood and Corte Madera avenues and probably assumed the town's small green pocket park was closed for the summer. You were right, but only about half right. Menke Park was indeed shut down for a $435,000 renovation that started the week of April 6. What most residents didn't clock is that Town Park's own playground was quietly scheduled to go down for its own separate project just as Menke came back online, which meant Corte Madera spent the better part of five months with exactly one of its two main gathering spots closed at any given time, never both.
That sequencing wasn't an accident you'd notice unless you were paying attention to two different town project pages at once. It's also the most useful thing to know if you're trying to figure out where things stand this week.
Two Projects, Never at the Same Time
Menke Park's overhaul, officially Project 24-006, covers a new ADA-compliant pathway connecting the park's upper and lower sections, a low retaining wall that doubles as seating, fresh landscaping, and a reroof and repaint of the Piccolo Pavilion, including a modified railing meant to make the pavilion easier to use for events. The town's Notice to Proceed set construction in motion the week of April 6, with work originally expected to run through mid-July, weather and conditions permitting. The full park was fenced off for the duration, not just the pavilion.
Town Park's playground project, No. 25-006, is a different animal entirely. The school-age play structure dated to the early 2000s, and a November 2024 safety inspection found problems serious enough that Public Works boarded up sections with plywood in the meantime. The town secured an $82,806 Healthy Play Initiative grant to help cover a full replacement, and construction on that piece was scheduled to begin by mid-July, closing that section of Town Park for about a month.
Line those two windows up and you get a town that effectively ran on one functioning park for most of the summer. Menke down from April through mid-July, Town Park's playground down from roughly mid-July into mid-August. If you're checking on either park this week, mid-August is close to the point where both projects were supposed to be finishing, so it's worth confirming current status before you plan around either one rather than assuming last month's signage still applies.
Where the Summer Concerts Actually Landed
The Corte Madera Community Foundation has sponsored free summer concerts at Menke Park for close to twenty years, and this was the first season in recent memory where that tradition had to relocate. With Menke Park fenced off, the whole 2026 concert series moved to Town Park for the season, a fact the town flagged directly when it announced the construction schedule back in the spring.
The lineup ran nearly every Sunday from mid-June through the end of August:
- June 14: Corte Madera Town Band
- June 21: Boot Juice
- June 28: Ruth Gerson
- July 5: Miko Marks
- July 12: Great North Special
- July 19: The Westones
- July 26: Sugar in the Gourd
- August 2: Jon Chi and the Pacific Syndicate
- August 9: Kanekoa
- August 16: Walking Mirrors
- August 23: Jackie Greene
- August 30: Danny Click and the Hell Yeahs
The Community Foundation's own materials noted the plan was to shift concerts back to Piccolo Pavilion once Menke Park construction wrapped, with a target of late July. If that held, the final three dates on the calendar, Walking Mirrors on the 16th, Jackie Greene on the 23rd, and Danny Click and the Hell Yeahs closing things out on the 30th, are back at their original home in Menke Park rather than Town Park. It's the kind of detail worth double checking on the day of, since a park reopening on paper and a park actually hosting an evening event are two different milestones, and the town's own updates are the most reliable way to confirm which one you're dealing with before you pack a blanket and head to the wrong lawn.
What Changed Beyond the Fencing
The park work wasn't the only thing moving this summer. The Village at Corte Madera kept its usual rhythm of Thursday food truck lunches and weekend live music running through September, alongside its School Cents program, which lets shoppers direct a share of up to $15,000 in support toward local schools just by logging receipts. SKIMS opened at the center this summer, and Aerie was slated to arrive by the end of August. None of that required construction fencing or a project number, but it's the kind of steady background rhythm that makes The Village feel like it's always mid-season, which is exactly the point.
On the food side, Super Duper Burgers opened a drive-thru location in town, and Palmetto Superfoods added a Corte Madera location at Town Center for smoothies and acai bowls, both additions to a dining scene that already includes long-running spots like Fieldwork Brewing, Pig in a Pickle, and Burmatown, which carries a listing in the Michelin Guide.
One correction worth making if you've bookmarked an older roundup: Mijo Marin, the Spanish-Cali restaurant that opened at 55 Tamal Vista Boulevard in 2024 with real backing from the team behind Guesthouse in Kentfield and Easy Rider in Petaluma, is now showing as closed. It was a heavily covered opening at the time, with wood-fired cooking and a raw bar that earned genuine buzz, so if you've been meaning to try it based on a piece written a year or two ago, it's worth confirming current status before making a reservation. Restaurants change faster than most local content gets updated, and this is a case where the gap between what's written and what's actually open is worth closing.
The Practical Version
If you're mapping out the rest of August in Corte Madera, three things are worth checking before you leave the house. First, confirm whether Menke Park and the Piccolo Pavilion are back in regular use, since that determines whether the last few Sunday concerts are at their original home or still at Town Park. Second, check on the Town Park playground's school-age section, since its month-long closure was timed to run right through the middle of this month. Third, if Mijo Marin was on your list, cross it off and look toward the town's other established spots instead.
None of this required a single major road closure or anything dramatic. It's just the ordinary maintenance of a small town, timed closely enough that most residents experienced it as one long, mildly inconvenient stretch rather than two. That's usually how good municipal planning looks from the outside: less like an event and more like something you'd only notice if you went looking for it.
If you're weighing a move within Corte Madera, thinking about what a listing near Town Park or downtown is really worth once you factor in walkability to The Village, or just want a second opinion on timing before you list, Pat Kelly has spent years watching this market and this town up close. Reach out for a free home valuation or a straightforward market conversation whenever you're ready.
