One Lake, Three Timelines: What's Actually Changed Around Lake Merritt This Summer

Do the loop on a Tuesday evening and something feels off, and it isn't your legs. The west side, along Lakeside Drive, rolls smooth and wide in its own protected lane, cars nowhere near your shoulder. Keep going and the moment you turn onto Lakeshore Avenue, the pavement turns rough, cones appear, and you're back to sharing space with parked cars and their doors. Same lake. Same loop everyone around here has done a thousand times. Two completely different projects, on two completely different clocks.

That's the thing worth knowing if you live near the lake and treat the loop as a daily fixture: it isn't one project finishing on one schedule. It's three separate efforts, moving at three different speeds, and the segment currently torn up happens to be the same stretch where the neighborhood's restaurant lineup just turned over.

The Half That's Already Done

If your loop starts on the west side, near Lakeside Drive, you're already riding on finished work. OakDOT completed the Lakeside Family Streets project in June 2026, adding a half mile of separated bike lanes along that stretch of the lake, building on the earlier Lakeside Green Streets project from 2019, according to We Bike Oakland's summer 2026 update. That's the segment that makes the west side of your loop feel finished, because it is.

The Half That Keeps Slipping

Cross to the east side and you hit the Lakeshore Avenue cycletrack, the project that's supposed to add nearly a mile of fully protected bike lane between East 18th Street and El Embarcadero. This is the one with the complicated history. City Council approved a $5 million budget for it through the Capital Improvement Program in 2024, and Mayor Barbara Lee and OakDOT Director Josh Rowan broke ground in July 2025. The original scope had pointed to a 2024 or 2025 finish.

It isn't finished. According to The Oaklandside's June 12, 2026 reporting, the city now estimates the segment will wrap in spring 2027, months behind the earlier timeline, because crews discovered the pavement base layer beneath Lakeshore was in worse shape than the initial engineering had accounted for, which forced a redesign before work on the protected bikeway itself could resume. The city has also coordinated with PG&E, which has separately been looking to replace aging infrastructure under the same stretch of road, adding another layer to the sequencing.

If you've ridden past the construction and wondered whether the whole thing stalled, it didn't. Bike East Bay's June 22, 2026 update describes paving happening first, with protected bikeway curb construction to follow, and says the hope is to have that phase wrapped by late summer. The gap between "curb work wraps by late summer" and "fully complete by spring 2027" is the striping, signage, and concrete median work that comes last. So the rough pavement and cones you're riding through right now are actual progress, just not the finish line yet.

A Third Piece That Hasn't Started

There's a third segment worth knowing about if you use Grand Avenue as part of your route: it isn't under construction at all yet. It's still in the design phase. Oakland is currently finalizing designs for bike improvements along Grand Avenue itself, according to We Bike Oakland's summer tracker, with funding still being sought for the work beyond design. That means the loop's three legs sit at three different stages right now: one finished (Lakeside), one under construction with a pushed-back completion (Lakeshore), and one still on the drawing board (Grand Avenue).

Here's how that breaks down if you're planning a ride or trying to make sense of what you're seeing on any given lap:

None of this is unique to the lake, either. We Bike Oakland's broader map for the summer shows work underway simultaneously on 14th Street, Franklin Street, and the Oakland-Alameda Access Project, part of what the group has described as a record number of protected bikeway projects the city has had under construction at once. Lake Merritt's loop is just the version of that citywide push you happen to ride past most often.

What's Turning Over on the Torn-Up Side

The stretch of Grand Avenue closest to the construction has also seen its restaurant lineup shift in the same window, and the timing is close enough to notice even if the two things aren't formally connected.

Bar Skula opened July 7, 2026, in the former Sidebar space at 542 Grand Avenue, directly across from the lake. It comes from the owners of Luka's Taproom and Lounge, serving as a cevicheria and grill with some Luka's favorites carried over, including the burger and fries, according to The Oaklandside's Nosh coverage. The space now carries a mural by Pancho Pescador as a tribute to sea creatures, and co-owner Maria Alderete has said framed photos of Lake Merritt's own creatures will join the decor, a detail that ties the new restaurant to the water it sits across from more directly than most openings bother to.

The same week, Enssaro, the Ethiopian restaurant that had operated on Grand Avenue near the lake for roughly two decades, relocated to Rockridge, opening its new location at 5897 College Avenue on July 31. It's still run by the same mother, daughter, and son team, and the new space was designed by Kalu Gebreyohannes-Royster of Liyu Designs, who has also worked on other East Bay restaurant interiors. A restaurant that anchored that block of Grand Avenue for twenty years choosing to leave the same summer the street outside it is torn up isn't proof of cause and effect, but it's the kind of coincidence a resident walking that block would be right to notice.

What This Actually Means If You Live Here

None of this changes whether the lake is worth living near. It changes how you should read what you're seeing on any given lap. If the west side feels finished, that's because it is. If the east side feels like a work zone that's been a work zone for a while, that's accurate too, and the current estimate puts the finish line in spring 2027, not this fall. If you're used to grabbing Ethiopian food on your way past Grand Avenue, that spot has moved to Rockridge, and the former Sidebar space across from the lake now serves ceviche instead.

The loop will eventually be one continuous, finished thing. Right now it's an honest snapshot of a city building infrastructure in pieces, at different speeds, funded and engineered on different timelines, while the businesses along the busiest piece of it adjust in real time. Worth knowing before your next ride, and worth knowing if you're the kind of person who pays attention to how a place changes block by block, which is most of what makes a neighborhood worth living in.

If you're weighing a move near the lake, or just want a second opinion on how a specific block is likely to trade given what's happening around it, District Homes knows this stretch of Oakland block by block. Start the conversation.