"We built this for the community, honoring what came before us but at the same time, blazing our own path," Ryan Soifer told the Marin Independent Journal in late September. He was describing Tasty Delicious, the new burger counter at 639 San Anselmo Ave.

The same sentence fits most of what has changed downtown this year. Each of the openings people talked about most in 2026 moved into a building with decades of history. Each paid to bring an old space up to current code. Each kept something from the business that came before. Walk the Avenue this October and you are looking at a downtown renewing itself by reusing what it already has, from a diner counter to a concrete plaza over the creek.

What Hilda's Left Behind, and What Came Back In

The Avenue has had a burger-and-shake spot for a long time. The IJ traces it to Jeep's Drive-In and Hilda's Coffee Shop in the late 1950s and early '60s, followed by Bubba's Diner in the mid-'90s. Tasty Delicious opened in Hilda's former home in the last week of September.

Reopening the room took real work. When Hilda's closed last fall, extensive deferred maintenance meant the space needed substantial work to meet current building, health and accessibility codes. San Anselmo architect Bill O'Callaghan and Cookline, a San Francisco construction company that also worked on Mamahuhu in Mill Valley, handled the infrastructure. The team has been open about the cost. On the Creekside Pizza & Taproom blog, they put the remodel of the roughly 1,000-square-foot space at about $1,400 per square foot. They also said they had asked for a power upgrade back in September 2025, and waiting on it held up an opening that was otherwise ready.

The team is local. Managing partner Pat Townsley owns Creekside, across the street. Chef and general manager Jackson Palmer grew up in Mill Valley and spent months testing burger blends in Creekside's kitchen, two patties at a time in a cast-iron skillet.

The history shows in the room itself:

• Bubba's original clock hangs near the kitchen, and Hilda's old sign sits next to the bathroom door.
• A mural of old San Anselmo by San Rafael artist Stella Prichard runs along the wall.
• The bathroom has illustrations of town landmarks, people and woodland creatures.
• The Bubba's Burger is on the menu, the restaurant's take on a smash burger with grilled onions, fresh jalapeños and firecracker sauce.

Interior designer Ann Lowengart, who lives locally, said on Instagram that her brief was a 1960s- and '70s-era burger joint in the spirit of Inverness. The result is a 12-foot-wide dining room seating about 34. It has a forest green tile counter from San Rafael's Clé, orange chrome-framed chairs and a green banquette backed in a '70s floral print. A new street-side parklet seats roughly 50, built with angled corners so drivers and pedestrians at the crosswalk can see each other.

Prices are low on purpose. Burgers run $10 to $14, fries start at $5 and a 12-ounce shake is $6. The soft-serve is made with high-butterfat milk from Valley Ford Cheese & Creamery's Jersey herd. Starting Oct. 5, hours expand to 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. Hand-cut, twice-fried fries arrive in late October. A coffee-shop breakfast is planned for later this year, and it will include Hilda's pancakes.

The Bakery That Has Now Been Reinvented Twice

A few doors down at 625 San Anselmo Ave., Tụ Tập opened July 29. The building has changed hands more than once. Kientz Hall, a Mediterranean restaurant, first turned the 57-year-old bakery into a contemporary dining room before closing in late 2024. Tụ Tập took that interior and reworked it again.

The new owners also kept part of the old building. The parklet out front has a retractable awning repurposed from the Kientz Hall roof. Inside, the restaurant is a series of separate rooms seating 114 downstairs and 48 on the rooftop. The name is the Vietnamese word for "gathering."

The team ties back to the town too. Owner Adam Block lives in Sleepy Hollow. Executive chef Justine Kelly grew up in San Anselmo and spent 18 years working with the late Charles Phan of the Slanted Door. She told the IJ that if she ever opened her own restaurant, "it would be in San Anselmo because my heart is there."

Sixty Years of Prescriptions, Then a Wine Rack

The next reuse is around the corner on Tunstead. Jack's Drug Store and Jack's Medical Supplies occupied 121 Tunstead Ave. from 1962 until 2022. Maison Nico, a San Francisco pastry business, is turning it into a bakery and cafe.

At its Sept. 21 meeting, the Planning Commission approved a conditional use permit for Maison Nico to sell bottled wine to take home. According to the staff report by community development director Heidi Scoble, the sales will be limited to a wine display about six feet wide plus a wine club, featuring organic, biodynamic and small-production wines from California and France.

There is no opening date yet. A spokesperson told the IJ that renovations should be finished in early November and that no opening date has been set. For now, the old drugstore windows are still under construction.

Off the Avenue on Greenfield Avenue, the same pattern is underway. The Town approved a tenant-improvement permit in January to convert the Java Hut at 60 Greenfield Ave. into a Café Réveille. The permit record lists no opening date.

The Biggest Old Structure Downtown Is a Bridge

The largest reuse project downtown is the concrete plaza over Building Bridge 2, the deck behind the fence between San Anselmo Avenue and Creek Park. At a special meeting on Aug. 11, the Town Council unanimously chose a concept from RHAA Landscape Architects of Mill Valley. It would turn the plaza into terraces with paths, shaded seating, stone walls, wooden decks and greenery sloping up toward the park's redwood grove.

"It's elegant. It's durable. It's permanent. It fits our character," Councilmember Tarrell Kullaway said at the meeting.

The council picked a direction. It did not approve construction. The County Flood Control District owns the structure, and a structural evaluation found it needs repairs and reinforcement before it can reopen. Under the arrangement the County and Town described on Aug. 19, the Town pays for the plaza improvements, and the District intends to fund the structural repairs once the final funding agreement is approved. The cost of the structural work is not yet known. District staff expects to bring a funding recommendation to the Board of Supervisors in early 2027. A donor paid for RHAA's redesign. The Town Manager told the IJ that all the work could be finished by early 2028 if fundraising succeeds.

Like the restaurants, the plaza project starts with an old structure, pays to make it safe and keeps what people already like about it.

An October Route That Covers All of It

The Historical Commission's last free walking tour of 2026 is Saturday, Oct. 10. It leaves from Creek Park at 9 a.m., needs no reservation, runs about an hour and a half and ends at the Historical Museum with refreshments. The Town's description includes "the evolving businesses and architecture of San Anselmo Avenue." This year, that history is easy to see on the street.

You can walk a version of it on your own:

1. Start at the Creek Park fence and look at the plaza deck that the terraces would replace.
2. Head to the Cheda Building. According to the San Anselmo Historical Museum, San Anselmo's first movie theater opened here in 1914, with admission at five cents. The building also housed the barbershop where Mel Bridges started cutting hair in 1945.
3. Stop at 625 San Anselmo Ave. and find the Kientz Hall awning over Tụ Tập's parklet.
4. Continue to 639 San Anselmo Ave., look for Hilda's sign inside Tasty Delicious, and order a twist cone.
5. Finish at 121 Tunstead Ave. to check on the old Jack's Drugs building.

There is plenty else on the October calendar. Creek Park's 52nd anniversary celebration runs 2 to 6 p.m. on Oct. 10, the same day as the tour. On Oct. 17, the Town's Fall Clean-up meets at Town Hall Plaza from 9 a.m. to noon to work on San Anselmo Avenue, nearby streets and the Creek Park parklet. That weekend, Oct. 17 and 18, the San Anselmo Arts Commission presents Moving Pictures, a free dance-on-film festival from 3 to 9 p.m. at Robson House, 237 Crescent Road. The Goblins' BOOtacular fills downtown with trick-or-treaters on Friday, Oct. 23, at 5 p.m., a week before Halloween.

For a sense of how long these changes take, Tasty Delicious asked for its power upgrade in September 2025 and opened in September 2026. Maison Nico's renovation is expected to wrap up in early November. A funding decision on the Creek Park plaza structure is expected in early 2027.

Knowing which buildings changed hands and what each new owner kept is part of knowing a town well. If you're curious what's planned for a storefront on your street, or how a building's past shapes what comes next, Melissa Crawford is glad to talk it through over a twist cone on the Avenue. Let's Connect.