At 5 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 4, the scheduled workday ends at Harrington Park, and the emcees Lori & RJ take the main stage on Cherry Street. For the next three and a half hours, Laurel Street from San Carlos Avenue to Cherry Street becomes what the city's downtown plan says the 700 block should be all the time: a street full of people, with no cars. The same stretch also carries protective fencing, a construction alley, and an open question about how much of the street's outdoor dining survives once the plaza is built.
Night of Holiday Lights has always been a shopping night as much as a celebration. This year it is also the clearest look residents will get at the plaza plan before the City Council makes its next decisions on it in early 2027.
A celebration designed to fill storefronts
The city's events staff describe the purpose plainly. At last year's event, the 15th Night of Holiday Lights, held Dec. 5, 2025, recreation supervisor Lauren Burd told the Sequoia High School paper Scot Scoop that the goal was to put downtown merchants in front of both visitors and neighbors.
"We have a really great downtown, so to be able to introduce our downtown shops to possibly people who don't even live in San Carlos is exciting, but it's also to remind residents who live in San Carlos, 'Hey, it's the holidays, we have fantastic retailers downtown, maybe check them out.'"
Burd also told the paper that the event has grown well beyond the tree lighting she remembered at City Hall Park as a child, and that more families now stay into the evening, going out to dinner or dancing in the street to the band. She said a couple of businesses had told her they make a point of catching the crowds. San Carlos Parks & Recreation presents the event with the Parks and Recreation Foundation of San Carlos.
That shopping purpose matters more this December than in most years, for reasons laid out two blocks from the stage.
The Dec. 4 lineup
The City's event page lists the program below. Admission is free, and the evening includes kids' activities, arts and crafts, beer and wine sales, hot chocolate, a holiday show, and artificial snow.
| Time | On the Cherry Street stage and along Laurel |
|---|---|
| 5:00 p.m. | Emcees Lori & RJ open the evening |
| Through the evening | The Tide Note Singers led by Emily Bender, Broadway Babies & Kids, San Carlos Children's Theater, Peninsula Lively Arts, Tap Dancing Christmas Trees, A Tribute to Stevie Wonder |
| Through the evening | Appearances by Santa Claus and the Snow Queen |
| 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. | Wild Child closes the night |
The festivities stay on Laurel Street between San Carlos Avenue and Cherry Street, the same footprint as last year. What has changed is the middle of that footprint.
What sits behind the fence at 753 Laurel
Harrington Park, at 753 Laurel St., has been under construction since spring, and the City expects to finish in early 2027. The finished park will have a multipurpose plaza for community gatherings, a new building with restrooms and storage, public seating, a rain garden, and a grove of trees. Last June, crews installed Silva Cells under the site, an underground system that gives tree roots room to grow and filters stormwater.
The park is the small space between Faith & Spirits and Mama Coco Cocina Mexicana. It is named for Frank Harrington, whom the local White Oaks Blog called the best crossing guard San Carlos has ever had. When the work began, the San Mateo Daily Journal reported that city staff had identified those two businesses as the ones most affected. In June, the Adult Community Center's Lunch Bunch held its monthly outing at Mama Coco's, and the City used its downtown blog to encourage residents to keep visiting businesses next to the fence.
The City has already held a big event around this construction. During the Hometown Days weekend, May 16 and 17, the Harrington Park contractor laid steel plates over a storm-drain trench on Laurel Street so the parade could pass. Under the project rules, storefront access on Laurel stays open, and construction vehicles use the alley behind Laurel Street, entering and leaving from Cherry and Olive streets.
The argument under the lights
The 700 block has been closed to cars since 2020, and the City's plan keeps it closed permanently. Not every merchant agrees. At an Oct. 8 listening session at West Park Bistro, attended by about 48 business and property owners and active residents, owners asked the City to reopen the block, even temporarily. In its posted responses, the City said downtown sales tax revenue returned to pre-pandemic levels in fiscal year 2021–22 and has been "relatively flat since then." It also said any change to the permanent closure would be up to the City Council.
The same responses lay out what outdoor dining would look like after the plaza is built. Restaurants and retailers would get 10 feet of City right-of-way directly in front of their storefronts, and any extension beyond that would be considered only after the plaza has been open for a year. Staff plan to ask the Council in early 2027 how to handle the parklets that went up during the pandemic. The City also said the construction schedule for the 700 block itself depends on full project funding.
White Oaks Blog made the merchants' side of the case in August. The post argued that non-restaurant businesses have lost foot traffic since the closure and that removing parklets would change the economics of the street. It reported that Dona's Hallmark, a downtown fixture for nearly 50 years, was closing because business had slowed. It also wrote that Town's owners estimated parklet removal would cost the restaurant about $2 million a year in dining revenue. The post proposed a pedestrian-friendly layout that keeps one-way traffic and some parking.
On Dec. 4, a car-free Laurel will hold a stage, a crowd, and restaurants serving late. The decisions about how the street works the rest of the year come in early 2027.
Parking, seating, and where to go after the show
The City's Downtown Prosperity Team has added parking options for the construction period, and two of them suit a Friday evening.
- Wheeler Plaza garage. When construction began, the San Mateo Daily Journal reported that the City planned to promote the garage's free parking.
- Caltrain lot, spaces 99 through 197. These are open to the public from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends, so an evening arrival on Dec. 4 works.
- Behind Harrington Park. Four short-term spaces in the alley have been replaced by a drop-off and loading zone.
Some of the plaza's furniture is already in place. Adirondack chairs went up along Laurel Street after Hometown Days in May, and more were added in August. In late September, the City installed two information boards on the 700 block, one in the raised planter near Diddams and one near U.S. Bank, showing what is being built.
To spend some of the evening in the shops the event is meant to support, there are several stops along the route. Muditā, Nidhi Patel's Indian art and home shop at 653 Laurel St., opened with a grand-opening weekend Sept. 12 and 13 and is new to the Night of Holiday Lights crowd. Faith & Spirits and Mama Coco's are on either side of the fence, Town anchors the 700 block, and West Park Bistro hosted the merchants' meeting in October.
The weeks after the lights
The 600 block gets its own test every Sunday. The farmers market runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Laurel Street between Cherry Street and San Carlos Avenue. In May, the City and the Urban Village Farmers' Market Association moved booths back from the curbs so storefronts are easier to see, extended the market into the Wheeler Plaza parking lot, and reopened Cherry Street to traffic and parking.
The other big light show in town is not run by the City. The Eucalyptus Avenue display is a month-long tradition organized by the street's residents, and the City publishes its traffic and parking arrangements on a dedicated page.
Several downtown decisions follow in early 2027. Staff will bring a faster process for changing on-street parking time limits to the City Council, after taking it to the Planning and Transportation Commission on Nov. 2. The parklet question is scheduled for the same period, and Harrington Park is expected to be finished then. The City also plans a digital information board near Laurel Street and San Carlos Avenue to replace the static sign there.
If you are weighing a move into or out of downtown San Carlos while Laurel Street is still being decided, Lyn Jason Cobb and the team can walk you through how the Harrington Park work and the 700 block plans may affect the blocks you are considering. Schedule a consultation, and we will start with the streets you know best.
