The Brentwood Block That Stopped Being Predictable: San Vicente, August 2026

For years, San Vicente between Bundy and 26th was the boulevard you drove down without really looking. Coral trees, joggers on the median, a hardware store, the pharmacy, the same handful of coffee places. You knew where to park. You knew who was behind the counter. That version of the block is quietly gone. Between January and April of this year alone, nine new shops opened in downtown Brentwood and the Village, and more are still queued up behind construction paper and DWP meters.

The interesting thing isn't the count. It's the composition.

The tell isn't the openings. It's who chose this block.

If you want to understand what changed, look at who is arriving. Paliskates, the historic Palisades skate and surf shop founded by Erica Simpson in 1999, served as a community hub before it was destroyed in the Palisades Fires; Simpson reopened it in downtown Brentwood in early 2025. Flour Pizzeria and Cafe, founded by Robert Flutie in 2023 to bring New York-style pizza to Los Angeles, lost its original location in the Palisades Fires and opened its next store in Brentwood. The Sunday Brentwood Farmers Market has expanded in recent months by taking in vendors from the Palisades.

That's a pattern, not a coincidence. Brentwood didn't just add restaurants. It absorbed the retail identity of the neighborhood next door, and the residents who used to run those errands two zip codes west now run them here. If you've been wondering why the Sunday market suddenly needs an extra lane closed, that's why.

What's actually on the block right now

Here is the working list, addresses attached, for anyone who wants to walk it rather than take my word for it.

The addresses matter because the walking geometry matters. Everything above sits within a fifteen-minute stroll of the coral-tree median, and half of it is within two blocks of the Country Mart. This is why sidewalks that used to just connect parking spaces to appointments now function as sidewalks.

Neighborly is the anchor no one really saw coming

The single largest bet on the block is Neighborly, the food hall concept at 11770 San Vicente, which brings together several partner menus alongside a compact marketplace so customers can mix and match dishes with grab-and-go items on a single stop. It opened Saturday, April 11 at 11:00 a.m., after final sign-offs from the city of Los Angeles. The chef lineup reads like a small festival: What Gaby's Cooking from Chef Gaby Dalkin, Mini Kabob from Chef Armen Martirosyan and family, Mixtape from Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, and Palermo Pizza Club from Frank Pinello of Williamson, New York's Best Pizza.

Two things about that address make the bet notable. First, the spaces at 11758 and 11754 San Vicente Blvd have hosted a number of restaurants, most recently Planta, and Kreation and Pizzicotto before that, and now a plucky new concept is giving the tricky locations a go. This is a corner that has chewed through operators. Second, the block that GPI Companies lists as 11770 San Vicente is a roughly 12,000 square foot retail property along Brentwood's commercial corridor, meaning a food hall on this site occupies enough square footage to change foot-traffic patterns for the whole stretch. If Neighborly holds, the corridor's evening pace changes. If it doesn't, the block quietly reverts to what it was.

And the arrivals aren't finished. In Brentwood, the h.wood Group is developing Montana's, a restaurant and lounge designed to evoke the atmosphere of an "exclusive, intimate clubhouse," slated for an early 2027 opening at 11920 San Vicente Blvd. That's the same group behind Delilah and The Nice Guy, which is a very different tonal register than a family food hall two blocks down. The block is now trying to be both things at once.

The Country Mart is doing what the Country Mart does

Through all of this, the Brentwood Country Mart, a 30,000 square foot shopping center at 225 26th Street just south of San Vicente Boulevard, first opened on November 18, 1948 and remains a quaint reminder of a bygone era, with barn-like architecture designed by Rowland Crawford. The Mart is the thing that hasn't changed, and its August calendar is worth knowing:

• Mart Littles Story Time in the courtyard, Wednesdays at 11:00 a.m., running through the end of August
• A Wimbledon afternoon in the courtyard earlier this summer, with rosé, strawberries and cream, and a celebration of Varley's arrival at the Country Mart
• A curated selection of brands including Varley, Orlebar Brown, and Cos Bar, alongside artisanal goods available at the Trading Post

The Mart's steady programming is what keeps the corridor from tipping into pure novelty. Farmshop, Diesel Bookstore, the courtyard fire pit, the post office, the shoe repair, the barbershop — these are the elements that make new arrivals read as additions rather than replacements.

What the block still hasn't figured out

A more lively San Vicente is not a solved San Vicente. Two of the more honest local voices on the corridor have raised the same point in different ways.

On stormwater, the flooding story is now on repeat. Severe flooding was reported on San Vicente Boulevard between South Saltair Avenue and Bundy Drive, and the owners of McCarthy Pharmacy recounted an all-too-familiar story because the same street flooded during a storm on February 14, 2025, almost a year to the day before the second flood threatened their store on February 16, 2026. A commercial strip that floods in the same block two years running is a commercial strip with a drainage question the openings alone don't answer.

On walkability, the local 90049 essayist put it well when they observed that San Vicente remains dominated by automobiles, but the increasing number of people walking between restaurants, stores, schools and the farmers market suggests residents are eager for a more connected community center, and better sidewalks, inviting outdoor seating and thoughtful use of public space could strengthen that momentum. The block wants to be a main street. The curb geometry still treats it like a thoroughfare.

The essayist's other caution is worth repeating: neighborhood growth is rarely uncomplicated, new businesses create excitement and foot traffic, but rising rents and changing consumer habits can make it difficult for smaller, longstanding merchants to remain, and that balance will determine whether Brentwood's current revival becomes something meaningful or merely fashionable. The next year's story is not which new place opens. It's which of the ones already here in 2019 are still here in 2027.

A short bracket for the rest of August

If you already live here, this is the walkable weekend:

• Wednesday morning: Mart Littles Story Time in the Country Mart courtyard at 11:00 a.m., August 5, 12, 19, and 26
• Sunday morning: the Brentwood Farmers Market on the expanded footprint, arriving early beats the lane closure
• A weekday lunch at Neighborly if you haven't yet, treating it as the four-menu experiment it is rather than a single restaurant
• An afternoon at the Country Mart courtyard fire pit with a Farmshop bag
• A quick loop past 908 S Barrington to see whether Layla's has flipped its sign yet, and past 11920 San Vicente to picture what Montana's will do to the evening tone next year

For neighbors, not visitors

None of this is written for people deciding whether to move to Brentwood. It's written for the people already here who noticed, sometime this spring, that the block felt different and couldn't quite name why. The reason is that the corridor absorbed a wave of Palisades operators, gained a food hall on a historically difficult address, and added a Sunday market busy enough to close a lane, all in roughly six months. Whether the block holds this shape depends on ordinary things: drainage, sidewalks, rents, and whether the Country Mart continues to do the slow work that has kept the corner recognizable since 1948.

If you own on one of the streets that feeds into this stretch — the pockets off Bundy, Saltair, Barrington, or the blocks that empty onto 26th — the character of your walk changed this year, and with it a small piece of what your address means to a future buyer. That is worth knowing whether or not you are planning to move.

When the time comes to think about what your Brentwood home is worth in this new version of the neighborhood, Shannon Flaherty Minor offers a considered, private conversation and a Free Home Valuation grounded in the block-by-block detail this market rewards.