Old Town Tustin Streetscape Improvements: What’s New

Park on El Camino Real this month and you might circle twice before you find the spot you used to grab without thinking. The streetscape project is changing curbside parking as it approaches its September completion target.

Old Town Tustin has been "getting improvements" for so long that the phrase has stopped registering. The city announced the project back in November 2025. A construction update video went up in December. A community newspaper covered it again in January. By the time anyone actually notices wet paint on a new curb, the story has already been told three times as future tense. What's different right now, in September 2026, is that the work is visible on the street. The city's own project FAQ lists a September 2026 completion target for the work spanning El Camino Real between First and Sixth Streets and Main Street between Newport Avenue and C Street. If you live in North Tustin and treat Old Town as your downtown, the project is expected to wrap up this month, bringing the permanent street layout into view.

How the Parklets Change Curbside Parking

The project includes new parklets and changes to curbside parking.

Seven new parklets are going into curbside spaces that used to hold cars. A city report to Tustin's Parks and Recreation Commission in February pegged the project at 18 percent complete at that point, with crews building the platforms one side of the street at a time to keep some parking available during construction. That detail matters because it tells you the loss was sequenced, not sudden. If you've been driving through Old Town all year without registering a change, the construction has unfolded in stages. The new curbside layout is permanent. A curb that used to hold three parked cars now holds a platform with tables in front of it.

The Foothills Sentry, the local paper that's covered these canyons since 1969, named two of the businesses getting parklets directly out front: American Grub (also known as Swinging Door) and El Camino Cafe. If you eat at either regularly, the sidewalk in front of your usual table is now a dining platform instead of a curb cut.

Where the parking actually went

The city designated three areas as free parking during construction. They may also be useful after the project wraps, as the new curbside layout settles in:

• The open floor of the parking garage on C Street, south of Main
• Two lots adjacent to the Tustin Water Plant on Prospect, north of Main
• Standard street parking on blocks outside the First-to-Sixth and Newport-to-C Street construction zone

The city FAQ lists these locations. If your old spot near American Grub is now a parklet, the water plant lots on Prospect are the closest reliable alternative, and they're a shorter walk than most people assume.

How Construction Affected Local Events

The construction coincided with Old Town's regular events. The city identified the events below as unaffected.

The Saturday Farmers Market at 245 El Camino Real kept its 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. run every week through the entire construction period. The Chili Cookoff and the Sunset Market, the third-Thursday evening event that runs May through September, were both explicitly called out by the city as unaffected by construction.

If you've been to Old Town on a Saturday morning any time in 2026, you already know this instinctively. The stalls were there. The vendors were there. What you might not have clocked is that those events continued while nearby curb work was underway.

Why the timing lines up this month

Here's where the project's expected September completion and the neighborhood's calendar intersect in a way worth planning around. The Sunset Market runs the third Thursday of the month, May through September, which puts the next one on September 17. Given the season's May-through-September run, that's likely the last Sunset Market before the event returns next spring. It's also landing in the month the streetscape project is expected to cross its own finish line.

The September 17 Sunset Market will give regulars a chance to see the project as it nears completion. The parklets and rebuilt sidewalks may be in place by then, though the project is expected to wrap up later in September. If you've been avoiding Old Town during the noisier stretches of construction, the market is a convenient opportunity to see how the streetscape has changed.

What to actually do with this

If you eat regularly at American Grub or El Camino Cafe, expect a parklet where your old curbside view used to be, and expect that as permanent, not temporary. If your habit was parking on El Camino Real itself, the water plant lots on Prospect and the C Street garage are the two spots worth learning now rather than after you've circled the block twice on a Saturday morning. And if you've been treating Old Town as background noise since November, the September 17 Sunset Market is a reasonable moment to see how the streetscape has changed as the project nears completion.

The market and the cookoff didn't move. The parking did.

If you're weighing a move within North Tustin or thinking about what a changing Old Town means for a home nearby, Myhanh Nguyen can walk you through what these kinds of neighborhood shifts tend to mean for buyers and sellers in the surrounding streets. Schedule a free consultation and home valuation to talk through your specific block, not a generic version of North Tustin.