What Locals Are Doing in Corona del Mar This Late Summer, While Sherman Gardens Reinvents Itself

For a village measured in a few blocks along Pacific Coast Highway, Corona del Mar runs on a small number of anchors. The bluff at Inspiration Point. The staircase down to Little Corona. The 2.2-acre botanical garden tucked behind a stucco wall on Dahlia Avenue. When one of those anchors shifts, the rhythm of a summer weekend shifts with it. That is exactly what is happening right now.

Sherman Library & Gardens spent years as much a lunch destination as a garden, thanks to Chef Jessica Roy's 608 Dahlia. That restaurant closed in October 2025, and the space is being rebuilt from the ground up as Hazeltine's, a full-service PCH-facing restaurant that will not open until Fall 2027. The interim summer is not a gap. It is a different kind of program, and it is worth planning around.

The Dog Days Are the Reason to Go Back This Month

If you have not been through the gates since spring, the garden looks different. Six oversized mixed-media dog sculptures are stationed along the paths, part of Sherman's annual summer art installation. This year's artist is Elizabeth Laul Healey, who splits her time between Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar and has produced more than 250 of these pieces over her career. The exhibit runs from May 16 through September 7, 2026, and is included with regular garden admission.

The practical shift for residents: Sherman moved to seasonal admission pricing when the exhibit opened, and if you visit more than a couple of times over the summer, a Superbloom membership pays for itself in roughly three visits. Parking at Dahlia and PCH is still free, which is the quiet luxury most people forget to mention.

Tea Is Not a Substitute for a Restaurant, But It Is a Preview

With 608 Dahlia gone and Hazeltine's still more than a year out, Sherman is running a limited series of Hazeltine's Afternoon Tea experiences inside the garden. These are the closest thing a resident can get to the future restaurant's food and hospitality before construction wraps.

The remaining 2026 dates:

• Sunday, July 12 — tea among the Dog Days sculptures
• Sunday, August 16 — same, with the exhibit at peak bloom
• Sunday, September 13 — Grandparent's Day, timed with the debut of a secondary mosaic art installation
• Sunday, October 18 — Harvest Tea with seasonal décor

The name Hazeltine's comes from Moses Hazeltine Sherman's daughter, Hazeltine. Operator Damian Orozco was selected for the restaurant, and the new build will front PCH near a new Bell Tower entrance, overlooking a refurbished Tea Garden. If you have opinions about what a garden restaurant should be, this is your window to form them before the finished version opens.

The Rest of the Summer Calendar Worth Blocking Off

The garden is not the only anchor. Two smaller, older institutions are still running full programs while everyone else looks at the sculptures.

The Baroque Music Festival Corona del Mar has been quietly programming inside St. Michael & All Angels and Sherman's Central Garden for decades. If you have never been, the June 24 concert at Sherman pairs recorder and strings with the open-air garden acoustics, which is a very specific pleasure that does not exist anywhere else in Orange County.

The Village PCH Stretch Is Not Actually a Restaurant Row

This is where locals and visitors diverge. The block of PCH between Marguerite and Poppy reads like a restaurant row on a map, but it functions more like a set of neighborhood living rooms with distinct hours and personalities. If you already live here, the question is not where to eat. It is which room you feel like sitting in tonight.

Bandera, at 3201 East Coast Highway, has been the rotisserie-and-cornbread standby since long before "neighborhood restaurant" became a marketing term. Part of the Hillstone group, no reservations on the app, and the patio fireplace does a lot of quiet work in September when the marine layer lingers past noon.

Five Crowns, the 1965 English country-inn replica, has kept its Yorkshire pudding on the menu through several full menu overhauls. The gastropub inside it, SideDoor, opened in 2009 and remains the answer when you want the same kitchen without the tablecloth commitment.

CDM Restaurant at 2325 East Coast Highway is the newer entrant with a downstairs speakeasy called Under CDM. No password, no reservation required for the bar. Phone-only for the speakeasy dining room, which is a deliberate choice that filters the crowd.

Foretti's CDM carries the recipes of its namesake chef under new ownership by Thaddeus Foret. The kitchen team largely stayed, which is why the pasta tastes the same as it did in 2013.

A Late-Afternoon Loop That Uses All of It

The best argument for living in Corona del Mar is that a full summer evening fits inside a mile. Here is one sequence that uses the current programming without touching a car after you park:

1. Park at Dahlia and PCH by 3:30 p.m. Free lot, closest to the mobility-accessible entrance.
2. Walk the Dog Days sculptures for about an hour. The light shifts fastest between 4 and 5 in July and August, and the mosaic detail on Elizabeth Laul Healey's pieces reads differently in raking sun.
3. Cross PCH to SideDoor for an early drink and the beer-cheese, or walk two blocks to Bandera's patio if you want dinner outside.
4. Head down Marguerite to Ocean Boulevard, then south to Lookout Point at Heliotrope. This is where the sunset actually happens, over Newport Harbor and Catalina, not from the main state beach.
5. If you still have energy, take the Buck Gully Trailhead entrance at the end of Poppy for a short after-dinner walk. The lower canyon is cool by dusk even in August.

The whole loop uses one parking spot and touches four named institutions. It is the kind of evening that gets described on real estate tours and then, oddly, never actually done by the people who move here for it.

What This Says About the Next Twelve Months

The late-summer 2026 program is a soft-open for a longer transition. Sherman is not just building a restaurant. It is repositioning the garden's front door toward PCH with a new Bell Tower entrance, expanding education spaces, and betting that a fully operating farm-to-table restaurant will change what a Wednesday afternoon in Corona del Mar looks like. The Village restaurants have not blinked. They have been here for 15, 30, 60 years, and they will still be here when Hazeltine's opens.

For residents, the takeaway is small and specific. The garden is more interesting to walk right now than it has been in years, precisely because it is between chapters. The tea previews will get harder to book. The Christmas Walk on December 6 will close out the year with the same route it has used since 1978. The Village keeps its shape while the anchor at its center rebuilds.

If you have been thinking about the practical side of living here longer, or about what the shifting Sherman corridor means for the blocks immediately around it, Danielle Hesley and the Hesley Team follow this stretch of PCH closely and would be glad to walk it with you.

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