For years, Fourth Street was a daytime errand. You went for The Gardener or Sur La Table, you queued at Bette's or Oceanview Diner, you left before the parking meters got interesting. That pattern is quietly inverting in 2026. The retail spine has softened at its south end, a new restaurant just landed on the anchor block, and Makers Row has programmed a summer of evening events that ask you to come after five, not before noon.
If you live in Berkeley and have been treating Fourth Street as a Saturday-morning habit, the block now rewards a different visit.
The Spenger's corner is in transition, and it matters more than one closure
The former Spenger's Fresh Fish Grotto building at 1919 Fourth St. is the largest single footprint on the street. What happens inside it sets the tone for the whole southern end. Two of its recent retail tenants are gone. Cotopaxi, the outdoor gear and apparel company, closed its Fourth Street location after less than three years, following a January ram-raid robbery in which burglars drove a pickup truck through the front window and made off with more than $20,000 in merchandise; the store never reopened after the incident. Its neighbor inside the former Spenger's space, Vans Shoes, also recently closed without fanfare.
That is two storefronts dark inside the block's biggest building. It is also why the Makers Row programming across the way has become the more interesting story: the center of gravity is moving from big-brand retail to smaller, event-driven activity.
Divan, and the argument for eating on Fourth Street again
The new anchor is a restaurant, not a shop. Fourth Street in Berkeley has officially welcomed the new modern Turkish restaurant Divan, which soft opened on June 22; for now Divan is focusing on lunch service only, but expects to open for dinner service in the coming weeks, with a menu that features Turkish breakfasts, mezze platters, freshly baked flatbreads, and a variety of Mediterranean-inspired sandwiches and kebabs. The address is 1788 Fourth St., a few doors from Iyasare and across the way from Artis Coffee.
Divan matters for two reasons. First, it fills a gap: Fourth Street has strong breakfast and coffee, a serious dinner option in Iyasare, and taqueria weight in Tacubaya, but the mezze-and-flatbread middle was thin. Second, it adds a lunch destination on the anchor block at exactly the moment the retail tenants on that same block have thinned out. The math on a Saturday visit changes when there is a reason to arrive hungry.
Divan joins a wider Berkeley restaurant surge worth naming, since neighbors ask. A popular ramen chain has arrived in Berkeley: Hinodeya is known for their dashi broth ramen soups, including a creamy vegan ramen and their house ramen special with chashu; Hinodeya has several restaurants in San Francisco and one in Newark, and the Berkeley location soft opened with its grand opening on Monday, June 1. On the coffee-and-pastry side, Dera Cafe has soft opened in Berkeley in the former location of Guerilla Cafe, which closed in December after 20 years of operation, serving chai, coffee, pastries, and desserts. A short walk from Fourth Street, Café Bolita, from the Bolita Masa folks, has taken over the brick building that was once home to Standard Fare in Berkeley and has quickly become a go-to lunch spot, treating nixtamalization like an art with earthy masa as the base for tetelas, frittatas, and tostadas.
The picture that emerges is not a single new restaurant. It is a block, and a city, moving from retail-first to food-first in one season.
The summer calendar is where the block's new personality actually shows up
Fourth Street Makers Row, the courtyard behind Cafe Réveille, has been building its programming for a few years. This summer the schedule has real density, and it is aimed squarely at residents, not tourists.
- Itty Bitty Market, Saturday, June 13, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The second installment of Itty Bitty Market invites visitors to explore a thoughtfully selected collection of vintage finds, handmade goods, art, apparel, home décor, and one-of-a-kind treasures while enjoying the shops along Berkeley's Fourth Street.
- Berkeley Nights, Saturday, June 20, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Berkeley Nights is an after-hours summer market on Fourth Street Makers Row, a golden-hour gathering of local makers, live music, and food trucks taking over the block as the sun goes down, with a curated lineup of Bay Area artisans, rotating food trucks, and live music in the open air.
- Brunchfest, third Sunday of every month, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Brunchfest is held on the third Sunday of every month from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. with free admission, bringing together Bay Area businesses, makers, and food vendors on Maker's Row, located just behind Cafe Réveille.
Read those three together and a pattern shows up: morning, midday, and golden-hour. The block is being programmed across the full daylight arc, with the evening slot the newest addition. Berkeley Nights is the one to watch. A 4-to-7 p.m. market in June, timed to sunset, is doing something the traditional Fourth Street calendar did not: giving residents a reason to walk down after dinner prep, not before.
A resident's sequencing, if you have three hours
The old Fourth Street loop was linear. Park near Fourth and Hearst, work south past Anthropologie and CB2, exit at Bette's. That loop still works, but it now underuses the block. A better sequencing for summer 2026:
Start at Artis Coffee or Cafe Réveille for the first coffee. Cut through Maker's Row while the vendors are setting up, then walk the retail spine north to Paraíso Plant Studio, Stained Glass Garden, and The Gardener. These are the shops that reward slowness. Loop back for lunch at Divan while it is still lunch-only, since the room will be busier once dinner service opens. If it is a Berkeley Nights Saturday, stay through golden hour on the Row rather than driving home. Sunset in that stretch of West Berkeley hits the low buildings at an angle that flatters the whole block.
If the calendar is a regular weekend, treat it as two visits, not one. Morning is for errands at Sur La Table, Rejuvenation, and Builders Booksource. Late afternoon is for the food. The block used to reward the combined visit; it now rewards the split.
What the tenant mix is telling you
Fourth Street in Berkeley is a specialized, regional shopping street that has grown over the last 30 years, established in 1978; the roots of the shopping area began in the mid 1960s with a vision to develop the area into an industrial park, and a small design/build firm proposed a concept of a Building Design Center conceived as a place catering to the homeowner, presented by a guild of businesses specializing in furniture, stained glass, solar power, hot tubs, lighting, textiles and interior design, before the street developed into a high end shopping district featuring a diverse retail mix.
The design-for-the-home DNA is still visible on the current tenant roster: CB2, Design Within Reach, Herman Miller, Earthsake, Farrow & Ball, Fireclay Tile, Masaya Co., Paraíso Plant Studio, Rejuvenation, Stained Glass Garden, Sur La Table, The Gardener, The Shade Store, The Vintage Rug Shop. That list matters for a neighborhood post because it is unusual. There is no other stretch in the East Bay with that concentration of design-and-home retail in walking distance of a single espresso bar. It is why an interior designer in the Berkeley Hills can plan a whole client sourcing morning on foot, and it is why the Cotopaxi-Vans exits feel less like a warning than a nudge back toward the block's original character.
If the southern anchor gets its next tenants right, and the early signal from Divan is that food is doing the anchoring rather than another national outdoor brand, the street may end 2026 looking more like it did in 1998 than in 2018: independent, design-adjacent, food-forward, and pedestrian-first.
What to watch through the rest of the summer
A few open questions the block will answer over the next two months. Will Divan open dinner service in July or push into August, and will the dinner menu bring the Fourth Street crowd back for evening visits it had stopped making? Will 1915 Fourth St., Suite 104 get a new tenant before the fall shopping season, and will it lean retail or lean food? Will Berkeley Nights become monthly rather than one-off, given the obvious appetite for evening programming?
These are the kinds of questions the block did not have to ask three years ago. That it is asking them now is the actual story of Fourth Street this summer. The retail bones are intact, the food scene is thickening, and the events calendar is finally reaching past noon.
Fourth Street is not reinventing itself. It is remembering what it was designed to be.
If you are watching West Berkeley closely because you own a home nearby and are thinking about how the neighborhood's shifts might shape your next move, Hope Broderick & Co reads these blocks the way we read a floor plan. Start your home transformation with a conversation about what your Berkeley property could become.
