Windsor's Summer Nights Aren't Only At The Town Green Anymore

Thursday at 5 o'clock, and half of Windsor is already walking toward McClelland Drive with a blanket under one arm and a folding chair in the other. The farmers market tables go up first, then the band sets up, and by 6 there's a crowd on the grass that includes toddlers, retrievers, and at least one grandparent who has opinions about the tomatoes. If you've lived here more than a summer or two, you know this rhythm without checking a calendar.

What's changed isn't the Green. It's everything around it.

The Green Still Owns Thursday

This year marks the 24th annual Summer Nights on the Green, the concert series the Town of Windsor runs jointly with the Windsor Farmers Market. The pattern hasn't shifted: market tables open at 5 p.m., the band starts at 6, and the series runs Thursdays through August 27, 2026. It's still free, still family-first, and still the closest thing Windsor has to a town square ritual.

If tonight happens to be the night you're reading this, it's also the last one of a different kind. Windsor's Family Movies on the Green ran Tuesdays from July 7 through August 4, starting fifteen minutes after sunset on the same lawn. That run ends tonight. It's a small detail, but it's the kind of thing you only know if you're actually tracking Windsor's calendar rather than glancing at a generic events page.

The Building That Sat Empty Isn't Empty Anymore

For years, the old Windsor Brewing Co. building on Windsor Road has been the kind of vacant storefront everyone in town has a memory attached to but nobody expects to see filled. That's changing. The team behind Grata Italian Eatery is turning the space at 9000 Windsor Road into Spur Saloon, a casual pub with a country-western sensibility that chef-owner Eric Foster has described as an "upscale Yellowstone lodge" feel, according to Sonoma Magazine's spring 2026 roundup of restaurants opening across the county.

That matters more than a single new pub would in a bigger town. Most of Windsor's dining and nightlife has clustered near the Green and along Old Redwood Highway for years. A saloon reopening a long-dead building on Windsor Road itself is a second anchor point, not just another option on the same street.

The golf course side of town picked up its own addition too. Jimmy's Lakeside Grill has opened at Windsor Golf Course, with seating that looks out over the course's pond rather than a parking lot, giving Windsor a sit-down dinner option that didn't really exist in that part of town before.

Put those two next to the Green and you get three distinct evening options that didn't overlap a couple of summers ago.

None of these compete with each other for the same crowd at the same hour. That's the part worth sitting with. Windsor didn't just add restaurants this year. It added a second and third gravitational pull to a town that used to have exactly one.

Walking It Off

The other half of a Windsor evening, for a lot of people, is what happens before or after dinner: a loop around a lake, a walk with the dog, something to burn off the farmers market cinnamon rolls.

Foothill Regional Park sits on 211 acres in east Windsor and offers close to 7 miles of trail across three ponds. The routes aren't interchangeable, and picking the wrong one on a hot evening is a real mistake:

• Three Lakes Trail is compacted gravel and wheelchair accessible, running near Pond C on mostly flat ground. It's the one to pick if you want a low-effort evening walk rather than a workout.
• Alta Vista Trail is the opposite end of the spectrum, a genuine climb that trail data puts at over 300 feet of elevation change on the way down alone. This is the one people mean when they say Foothill has a real hike in it.
• Oakwood Trail is the longest single route in the park at 1.5 miles, with the most elevation gain of any trail there. Westwood and Oakwood both open up views of Windsor and the Coast Range once you're up on the ridge.

The park is open daily from 7 a.m. to sunset, dogs are welcome on leash, and the three ponds allow bass and bluegill fishing, though swimming and boating aren't permitted. If you want the gated, gravel Three Lakes route with vehicle access, you'll need a key card, available through the county parks office at (707) 565-2041.

Closer to the center of town, Hiram Lewis Park has pickleball courts, a baseball field, and a paved path around the perimeter that connects directly into the Windsor Creek Trail, which runs south toward Los Amigos Road under enough tree cover to stay noticeably cooler than the open street on a warm evening. It's a shorter, shadier option for anyone who wants twenty minutes of movement rather than a full loop at Foothill.

The difference between these two options isn't cosmetic. One is a destination you plan an evening around. The other is something you fold into a Tuesday on your way home from Spur Saloon or the golf course.

The Point

A year or two ago, if someone asked what there was to do on a weeknight in Windsor, the honest answer was the Green, and that was basically it. The Green hasn't lost anything this summer. It's still running its 24th season of Thursday concerts, still pairing them with the farmers market, still the town's default answer for a family evening.

But it's no longer the only pin on the map. A building that sat empty for years now has a name and a chef behind it. The golf course has a reason to stay for dinner instead of just finishing a round. And the trail system around the edges of town, from Foothill's ridge climbs to the shaded creek path out of Hiram Lewis Park, gives people a way to bookend any of it.

That's a real shift in how a Windsor evening gets spent, not a list of things that happened to open in the same year. If you've been doing the same Thursday-on-the-Green routine for a while, this summer is worth breaking the pattern at least once.

If you're thinking about what any of this means for your own Windsor property, whether that's timing a sale around what the town's evening map now looks like or figuring out which part of town fits how you actually want to live, Ashley McSweeney knows this town block by block. Request a free home valuation and consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.