Placentia turns 100 on December 2, which is why the calendar has looked unusually full since January. The part most residents miss is what happens now, in the back half of summer, when the Centennial programming stops being marquee events and settles into a weeknight rhythm that briefly holds the whole town on foot.
This is also the last summer Old Town looks the way it looks. A $10 million revitalization of the Santa Fe Avenue corridor is scheduled to break ground in the fall, and the Golden Avenue Bridge is closed in both directions through September 11. Together they change how you get to the everyday layer, and what the everyday layer looks like when you arrive. If you live here, the back half of the season is worth reading as one connected thing rather than a stack of flyers.
The Concert Calendar Nobody Prints In Full
Concerts in the Park at Tri-City Park runs Thursday evenings at 6:30 p.m., and the summer is themed around 100 Years of Music for the Centennial. The lineup is the kind of thing residents ask about at the market on Tuesday because the city page buries it under a click.
| Date | Act | Style |
|---|---|---|
| July 16 | Elton Jones & The Jets | Elton John tribute |
| July 23 | JJ Smith & The Helm | Classic rock, blues, folk, Americana |
| July 30 | Faultline Country | Modern country rock |
Three Thursdays left. The park sits at 2301 N. Kraemer Boulevard, which matters for the next section because the way you would normally drive there from the south side of town does not currently exist.
The Bridge That Rewrites Your Tuesday
The Golden Avenue Bridge Replacement Project is a $6 million rebuild funded by Measure U and the federal Highway Bridge Program, and the bridge is fully closed in both directions through Friday, September 11. If you live south of the wash and your habit is to cut north on Golden to reach Kraemer or the Tri-City side of town, that habit is broken for the rest of summer.
The practical rerouting matters more than the project itself. Bradford Avenue and Placentia Avenue absorb the displaced traffic, which means the Tuesday farmers market at Placentia Town Center, 130 E Yorba Linda Boulevard, is easier to reach on foot from the neighborhoods around it than by car coming from the south between 3 and 7 p.m. The market runs those four hours weekly, and the neighbors who used to drive it are the ones grumbling. The neighbors who walk it are having their best summer in years.
Why This Is The Last "Before" Summer On Santa Fe
The Old Town Placentia revitalization is a $10 million project funded through the Placentia Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District, anticipated to begin construction in Fall 2026. The scope is pedestrian accessibility, new landscaping, lighting, signage, and roadway rehabilitation along Santa Fe Avenue.
Translation: the block that holds Tlaquepaque Restaurant at 101 W Santa Fe Ave, El Farolito around the corner, and the Craftsman Wood Fired Pizza patio is about to be torn up for the better part of a year.
Which is why the current summer feels heavier than usual on Santa Fe. Tlaquepaque has been there since 1965, its name pulled from a sister-city exchange with a suburb of Guadalajara. El Farolito opened in 1974 under the Sandoval family. Neither is new. What is new is that residents who had drifted toward Brea or Anaheim Packing District for weeknight food are rotating back through Santa Fe on the theory that the patio experience is finite. They are correct. Old Town LIVE! programming on Santa Fe through the Placita merchants and the Chamber compresses those visits into something closer to a scene between now and the groundbreaking.
A Resident's Week, Actually
The reason to think about the back half of summer as one thing is that the pieces interlock. A workable Placentia week looks something like this:
- Tuesday, 5:30 p.m. — Walk to the Placentia Town Center farmers market. Produce for the week, dinner from a stall, home before dark.
- Wednesday — Old Town for a Craftsman pizza on the patio or Tlaquepaque for the exposition kitchen. Skip the drive north; park once on Santa Fe.
- Thursday, 6:30 p.m. — Tri-City Park for the concert. Bring chairs. Route via Kraemer, not Golden.
- Friday — Kraemer Memorial Park for the evening. Movies in the Park runs Centennial-themed screenings on select Fridays. Confirm the date on the city calendar rather than the lawn chatter.
- Saturday morning — George Key Ranch Historic Park at 625 W Bastanchury Rd. Citrus, shade, one of the few pieces of the original Placentia grove still in the ground.
- Sunday — Fiesta Champagne brunch at Tlaquepaque runs 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with live entertainment. Or the Bruery, which locals treat as the anchor and everyone else treats as a destination.
Nothing on that list requires a freeway. Two of the six require the bridge, and both have easy substitutes until September 11.
What's Worth Blocking Off Before Labor Day
The Centennial calendar has a few dates residents keep meaning to write down and forgetting:
- Thursdays through July 30 — Final three Concerts in the Park at Tri-City. Faultline Country closes the series on the 30th.
- October 10 (tentative Saturday) — Placentia Heritage Festival returns at Kraemer Memorial Park. Pancake breakfast, parade with band competition, car show, business showcase. Centennial year adds historical tributes to the standard program.
- December 5 — Birthday Celebration and Tree Lighting. This is the bookend to the January 24 Mayor's Centennial Gala and the May 2 5K, and the last day the Centennial programming officially runs.
The Heritage Festival is the one worth resisting the urge to skip this year. In an ordinary year it is a pleasant Saturday. In the Centennial year it is the last big daytime gathering before Santa Fe goes under construction.
The Quiet Change Underneath
The story residents are telling themselves this summer is that the Centennial is a party. The more useful story is that the Centennial happens to coincide with two capital projects that will change how Placentia moves for the next several years. The Golden Avenue Bridge is a nine-month interruption that ends in a wider crossing with sidewalks and bike lanes, which changes north-south walkability permanently. The Old Town corridor project is a longer interruption that ends in a Santa Fe Avenue built for pedestrians first, which is the version of Old Town the merchants have been asking for since before the pandemic.
The summer you are in the middle of is the interval between those two states. That is why the weeknight programming feels denser than the flyers suggest, and why the residents who are treating this July and August as ordinary are the ones who will be surprised in October when the fences go up.
Plan the back half accordingly. Walk more of it than you would in a normal August. Eat on Santa Fe more than you would in a normal August. The 5K in June was a rehearsal for the December birthday. Everything between is the actual town.
If you are thinking about what any of this means for a move within Placentia, or whether the Old Town work changes the calculus on a home near Santa Fe, Daniel Gray at First Team Real Estate tracks the block-level detail behind these projects. Let's Connect.
