Ross Street Live in Downtown Santa Rosa: The Final Week
October 22, 2026
October 22, 2026
The Ross Street closure in downtown Santa Rosa has about a week left. Since Aug. 14, the east side of Ross Street between Mendocino Avenue and the parking lot exit behind 427 Mendocino Avenue has been closed to cars. In its place there has been a stage, food trucks, Sunday markets and family afternoons. The closure ends on Saturday, Oct. 31. No one has announced what happens to the block after that.
The businesses around it are not waiting to find out. This year three of them committed to addresses a short walk from the closed block: a nightclub that moved in, an Italian restaurant that opened in July and a spice shop that opened in late summer. Whatever the city decides about Ross Street, the north end of downtown already has more reasons to walk there than it did in the spring.
Ross Street Live is the smaller version of an older idea. The Press Democrat reported that the pilot grew out of a city proposal to close part of Fourth Street to cars. Some local businesses pushed back on that plan because they worried about the impact on their sales. The City Council asked staff in 2024 to look at car-free pedestrian spaces. In early 2025 the city gathered input through a community survey and a council study session, and it looked at programs in San Mateo, San Jose and San Diego. After opposition to testing on Fourth Street, the city shifted in late 2025 to exploring a smaller pilot on Ross Street. The Downtown Action Organization formed an ad hoc committee that November and reached an agreement with the city on June 4.
The partners give a sense of who wanted this. Five local businesses, the SoCo Market, the city and the Downtown Action Organization all put work into it. The DAO is the nonprofit that manages the Downtown Santa Rosa Community Benefit District. The Downtown Santa Rosa event page lists California Theatre, Cooperage, Flagship Taproom and The Lost Church among the downtown businesses organizing it.
City spokesperson Misti Wood told the Press Democrat the program would serve "as a test of expanded pedestrian space and community programming in the downtown core, while allowing the city and its partners to gather feedback and assess impacts." Vice Mayor Jeff Okrepkie chairs the city's Economic Development Subcommittee. He told the same paper there was no clear timeline for revisiting other places to close to cars, but that the pilot gives the city a real example to work from:
"You never know until it's done. It gives people an opportunity to see what it could look like, and what it could possibly turn into."
The Press Democrat described the closed section as the stretch behind The Corner Store Collective running to Mendocino Avenue. Walk a few doors in either direction on Mendocino and you find most of downtown's 2026 openings.
| Business | Address | What changed | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Lost Church | 545 Mendocino Ave. | Moved to a new downtown location | Quiet opening planned for April 10, reopening event April 18 |
| Capriciano Osteria | 505 Mendocino Ave. | New Italian restaurant in the former Tipsy Taco space | Opened July 17 |
| Sonoma Spice Queen | 404 Mendocino Ave. | Second shop, joining the original | Grand opening Aug. 29 |
The Lost Church announced its move months before the street closed. Under the pilot it took a regular slot, hosting every fourth Friday. Capriciano opened four weeks before the first Ross Street concert. The Press Democrat reported in August that it was packed a week after opening. Patch covered Sonoma Spice Queen's grand opening two weeks into the pilot.
Some longtime operators were already around the corner. Leeanna Ausiello-Kane's family co-owns Ausiello's 5th Street Bar and Grill, which has been downtown for nearly 26 years. She told the Press Democrat the restaurant would pop up on Ross Street with smash burgers and fried food, and said, "I feel like this pilot program could help change the perception of downtown." California Theatre's Argo Thompson told the paper that when the theater moved in four years ago, "it was clear there were no other music venues downtown."
That gap is what the pilot set out to fill. Josh Walden of School of Rock Santa Rosa said he hoped it "could lead to a stage downtown."
The city calendar lists the block's hours as 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays, 5 to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Here is what is left on the schedule from Friday on:
California Theatre's Villains Ball also runs from Oct. 30 into Oct. 31. It has DJ music, a costume contest, pop-up villain performances and CURVEBALL QUEEN hosting as Elvira. A separate Halloween Bar Crawl is on the downtown calendar for Oct. 31, from 4 p.m. to 11:55 p.m.
The weekday lunch trucks on the block have included Galvan's Eatery, MoMo Man, Los Flippin Tacos and Mariscos El Cora. This week is the last chance to eat lunch from them in the middle of a street.
The day after Ross Street reopens to cars, activity moves a few blocks back to Courthouse Square. The city has three dates set there:
All three are held at the square itself, the way downtown has run its big events for years. Ross Street spent three months testing whether a second, smaller space around the corner could fill an ordinary Friday night.
The city's next public space project is in southeast Santa Rosa. The City and Sonoma Land Trust have started a master plan for the Southeast Greenway, a 49-acre stretch of land nearly 2 miles long. It connects Farmers Lane and Highway 12 to Spring Lake Regional Park, and the plan calls for park amenities, trails, natural open space and gathering places.
Community workshops are on Nov. 4 in English and Nov. 5 in Spanish at Montgomery Middle/High School. Residents can also fill out the community survey, and updates are posted at SoutheastGreenway.org. Planning runs in three phases from fall 2026 through summer 2027.
The Ross Street block took nearly a year of negotiation to win three months without cars. The Greenway workshops are the first open meetings in a process that will decide how 49 acres get used for years to come.
Downtown blocks like this one gain value one opening at a time, and the north end of Mendocino Avenue added three of them this year. If you own near downtown Santa Rosa and want to know how that kind of change shows up in your home's price, Amanda Shone can walk you through it with an instant home valuation and a conversation about the blocks around you.
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