Drive past the Calabasas Tennis & Swim Center on most evenings and the lake behind it looks like any other private amenity in a city full of them. A greenbelt, a stretch of water, a gate. Residents who have lived here for years may never have set foot on the grass because there has never been a reason to try. Calabasas Lake belongs to the city, but it does not belong to the public. Not most of the year.
Four times each summer, that changes. The SunSets Summer Concert Series turns the lake into the one place in town where the fence comes down, if only for about ninety minutes. The season opened June 14 with a Billy Joel tribute from Billy Nation, continued July 19 and August 2, and closes with a final concert on August 23. If today is the Sunday in between, that is not an oversight in the schedule. It is the gap before the last one.
The Fence Comes Down Four Times, Then Goes Back Up
The city is direct about what this actually is: Calabasas Lake is private, and it opens to the public only during these city-sponsored concerts. That single fact reframes the whole series. It is not a park with a concert schedule attached. It is private property that becomes public on a short list of specific dates, and August 23 is the last date on this year's list.
The mechanics reward a little planning. Entry is through the Tennis & Swim Center at 23400 Park Sorrento, and parking there is limited, which is why the city runs a free shuttle from the Civic Center at 100 Civic Center Way between 4:30 and 8 p.m. Dogs are not allowed on the shuttle, with the usual exception for service animals. Picnics are welcome on the grass, but glass bottles, barbecues, and heating devices are not. Umbrellas and shade structures are fine as long as they do not block anyone else's view of the stage. None of this is complicated, but it is only useful to know before 6 p.m. on August 23, not after.
The lake area hosted one other public night this season that worked on different rules entirely. On July 24, the Tennis & Swim Center opened its pool for a Dive-In Movie Night, and that event did not allow outside food or drinks at all, a reminder that the pool and the lake are two separate privileges with two separate sets of restrictions. That night has already passed. The lake concert has not, at least not yet.
What Changes for Good While the Lake Only Changes for a Night
A few miles away, Calabasas is in the middle of a different kind of transition, one that will not reverse itself once the season ends. The Commons at Calabasas, the Rick Caruso-developed shopping center that opened in 1998, broke ground in early February on a redevelopment that removes its aging movie theater and replaces it with roughly 190,000 square feet of new construction: a dozen or more shops and restaurants along what the center is calling Commons Lane, plus 80 apartment homes on the site where the theater used to sit. Caruso's chief executive, Corinne Verdery, framed the project around longevity rather than novelty, noting that the center has spent nearly three decades as a gathering place for the community.
The current phase, running from July through September, has construction underway on both the new storefronts and the parking structure that will serve the apartments. The center's own materials are clear that this is not a closure. The Commons has stayed open through every phase of construction, and the shops and restaurants operating today are functioning exactly as they did before the groundbreaking.
Some of what is open now is new. Superba Food + Bread, a California brasserie with roots in Venice Beach, opened at 4799 Commons Way in late March, bringing an in-house bakery program and a menu that includes a market vegetable fritto misto alongside its signature grain bowl. That addition did not require the lake's kind of temporary access. It is simply part of the Commons now, the same way the theater used to be, until it wasn't.
That contrast is the useful part. The lake's opening is a date on a calendar that will not repeat until next summer. The Commons is quietly becoming a different retail center, one storefront and one lease at a time, and what opens in 2026 will still be there in 2027 when the apartments come online. One is an event. The other is construction.
A handful of smaller, repeatable programs are also running at the Commons right now, worth knowing if a weeknight or weekend plan needs an anchor:
| Still running | Where | Through |
|---|---|---|
| Family entertainment, every Tuesday | The Courtyard, between Marmalade Café and Toscanova | August 25 |
| Live music, every Thursday | The Commons at Calabasas | September 3 |
| Prix fixe dinners, Monday through Wednesday | Participating Commons restaurants | September 9 |
| 30% off affogatos, Monday through Thursday, 2 to 7 p.m. | Bacio di Latte | August 31 |
| Weekend brunch | BLVD Steak | December 27 |
Each of those has an end date except the brunch, and each is the kind of detail that only matters if someone checks it before the week it disappears rather than after.
The Saturday That Never Needed a Schedule
Old Town Calabasas is changing too, though in a quieter register than the Commons. Jon & Vinny's, the California-Italian restaurant from chefs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, opened its new location at 23538 Calabasas Road on July 27, directly across from Sagebrush Cantina. That is a genuine addition to the neighborhood's dining options, and unlike the lake concerts, there is no date attached to when it stops being available.
The one fixture in Old Town that has never needed an opening date or a closing date is the farmers market on Calabasas Road, just west of El Cañon Avenue, also across from Sagebrush Cantina. It runs every Saturday morning, rain or shine, year-round, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. It has been the neighborhood's steadiest social ritual for longer than most of the current storefronts around it have existed, and it will still be running the Saturday after the lake closes for the season and the Saturday after that.
That is really the distinction worth carrying into the rest of the summer. Some of what makes Calabasas feel alive right now is permanent, like a new restaurant on Calabasas Road or a rebuilt retail center that will look different by 2027. Some of it is temporary by design, like a lake that only admits visitors four nights a year. Knowing which is which changes how a person plans the next several weekends, and it is the kind of distinction that only becomes obvious once someone has actually watched the calendar work this way for a season or two.
If Calabasas keeps giving you reasons to notice how this city actually runs, from a private lake with a public schedule to a shopping center rebuilding itself in real time, that noticing is often the first sign someone is ready to talk seriously about a move. The Royal Group works across the Los Angeles market with the same local-first approach used here, and Jennifer Holmes is always glad to talk through what a home search in Calabasas actually looks like right now. Schedule a consultation today.
