Every August, Belvedere residents know how the season ends. A Sunday afternoon in the park, a tribute band on the gazebo stage that's stood since the city's centennial, and a crowd that's been doing this since 1998. This year the closing act is Foreverland, a Bay Area band built around the catalog of Michael Jackson, taking the stage at Belvedere Park on Sunday, September 6, at 4pm. It's the 28th consecutive season of Concerts in the Park, and the last free Sunday the city will offer until next June.
What's different this year isn't the music. It's the road you'll take to hear it.
Since late July, the city has been running an emergency repair on Beach Road, one of only two roads that carry traffic onto Belvedere's islands from the rest of the peninsula. During working hours, the south lane closes entirely and two-way traffic gets squeezed onto the single remaining north lane. That's not a lane reduction in the usual sense of "expect delays." It's a stretch of road that, for a chunk of the day, has room for exactly one lane of cars moving in both directions at once. The project runs through October 30, which means it's still very much active when Foreverland plugs in on the 6th.
Why the Seawall Couldn't Wait
The Beach Road project isn't cosmetic paving. City engineers flagged the concrete seawall along a 580-foot stretch of Beach Road, east of Peninsula Road, as cracking and at risk of failure in a major earthquake. The $4.63 million fix calls for a new steel sheet pile wall driven 32 feet deep, installed in three sections along the exposed stretch. Homes at 16 through 38 Beach Road sit directly in the work zone, and while the roadway itself is constrained, the city has kept gangway access to bayside buildings open the entire time. It's a project built around triage: protect what's most at risk first, accept that a third of the seawall stays untreated for now, and manage the road disruption as a byproduct rather than the point.
That's useful context if you've been wondering why a stretch of road you drive past daily has flaggers, parking restrictions, and a fenced staging area that seems to be there for the long haul. It is. The work is scheduled to run into fall, well past the last concert of the summer and into the start of the rainy season.
The Same Weekend, a Second Road Changes
Beach Road isn't the only project reshaping how people move through Belvedere and Tiburon this year. Caltrans began Phase 1 construction in August on its State Route 131 repaving project, better known locally as Tiburon Boulevard, stretching from roughly 1,000 feet west of the Highway 101 interchange into downtown Tiburon at the Main Street intersection. Most of the disruptive work is scheduled for overnight hours, which keeps daytime traffic mostly intact, but the project has already reshaped what gets built and when.
The Ark reported that Caltrans, facing objections over school bus safety at transit stops, pulled planned bike lanes between Blackfield Drive and Trestle Glen Boulevard out of Phase 1 entirely. Construction on that segment is now targeted for early 2029, and it's waiting on the town to finish a separate fiber-optic conduit project first. It's a small footnote in a much larger $12.7 million pavement job, but it tells you something about how this corridor gets built: not all at once, and not without a fight over what belongs where. If you've noticed orange cones near Blackfield without seeing new striping to match, that's why.
Three Timelines, One Weekend
Laid side by side, the overlap is easy to miss if you're only tracking one of these at a time.
What's happening | Dates | Where |
|---|---|---|
Concerts in the Park finale (Foreverland) | Sunday, September 6, 4pm | Belvedere Park, San Rafael Avenue |
Beach Road Stabilization Project | July 27 through October 30 | Beach Road, between Peninsula Road and Main Street |
SR-131 / Tiburon Boulevard Phase 1 | Started August 2026 | Near Highway 101 into downtown Tiburon |
None of these three were planned around each other. The concert schedule was locked in months ago by the volunteer committee that runs it. The Beach Road timeline was set by engineering urgency, not the social calendar. The Caltrans project runs on a state funding and permitting clock that has nothing to do with either. They just happen to land in the same six weeks, which is worth knowing if you're the one trying to get to the park by 4pm.
One Island, Two Roads
Here's the part that actually matters for anyone living on Belvedere or Corinthian Island right now. Belvedere's islands connect to the Tiburon Peninsula by only two roads. San Rafael Avenue, where Belvedere Park and City Hall both sit, is one. Beach Road, currently down to a single shared lane during the day, is the other.
For most of the year, residents treat those two roads as interchangeable, taking whichever one is more convenient for wherever they're headed. This is the first stretch in recent memory where that redundancy doesn't fully hold. If you live off Beach Road or on Corinthian Island, the smoothest way to the season finale runs through San Rafael Avenue, the same road that will also be carrying every other car and stroller headed to the same concert at the same hour. It's not a crisis. It's a Sunday where the town's two ways in and out aren't equally open, and the one that is happens to dead-end at the party.
What to Actually Plan For
A few practical notes if you're headed to the park on the 6th, or just navigating Belvedere this week:
- Beach Road's south lane closes during working hours through October 30. If you're driving that stretch during the day, expect flaggers directing single-lane, two-way traffic.
- Gangway access to bayside homes along Beach Road stays open throughout construction, even when the roadway itself is restricted.
- Tiburon Boulevard's overnight paving work shouldn't affect a Sunday afternoon drive to the concert, but expect signage and equipment staged along the corridor as Phase 1 continues.
- Parking near Belvedere Park will be tighter than usual with concert crowds converging on San Rafael Avenue. Arriving before 4pm gives you first pick.
- Concerts in the Park runs entirely on volunteer effort and donations. If Sunday's finale is one you'd want to see continue into 2027, the Belvedere Community Foundation is the group that keeps the series funded.
After the Music Stops
Once Foreverland finishes its set, Belvedere Park goes quiet until next June. The Beach Road project keeps running for another two months. The Tiburon Boulevard repaving continues into the fall on its own overnight schedule. The town doesn't stop moving once the picnic blankets get folded up, it just moves differently, with less foot traffic and more orange cones.
For twenty years, Phillipa Criswell has watched Belvedere's calendar and its infrastructure shift season to season, and this is the kind of detail that only shows up if you're paying attention to both at once. If you're curious about what else is changing around town, or thinking ahead to what any of this means for a property on Beach Road or Corinthian Island, Phillipa Criswell is always glad to talk through what's actually happening on the ground. You can also read more in our neighborhood guide to Belvedere for the fuller picture of daily life here.
