If you've been watching the old Scales storefront on Fisherman's Wharf for signs of a crew inside, you probably remember the announcement. In November 2024, Monterey city officials signed a lease with San Pedro Fish Market for the 17,000-square-foot space, with renovations starting in 2025 and an opening penciled in for 2026. That's this year. Except the company's own site, last updated this April, now says something different.
"We're honored and excited to be joining you at Monterey's legendary Fisherman's Wharf in 2027," reads the company's Monterey page. Not this year. Next year. In the seventeen months between the lease announcement and that construction update, the target moved by a full twelve months, and the space that closed as Scales in 2021 will likely sit empty for six years before anyone eats there again.
Meanwhile, everything else on the Wharf's calendar kept moving whether or not the shrimp trays showed up. That's the part worth understanding if you live near here: the neighborhood's rhythm this year has almost nothing to do with the biggest construction promise on it.
A Storefront That's Been Dark Longer Than It's Been a Rumor
Scales Seafood & Steaks ran for seven years before it closed in 2021. San Pedro Fish Market, a Southern California chain known for its shrimp trays, is bringing a 17,000-square-foot concept into that same footprint, a space Mayor Tyller Williamson called "a fantastic addition" when the lease was announced. That was the plan.
But the operator is simultaneously building a much larger flagship at West Harbor in San Pedro, a 55,000-square-foot, 3,000-seat project on a 49-year lease. Monterey's build is the smaller of two active projects for the same company, and smaller projects on shared construction timelines slip. The 2027 date on their own site isn't a scandal. It's just the honest version of what was always a two-to-three-year buildout, now running on the later end of that range.
What it means for anyone walking the Wharf this month is simple: the storefront that's supposed to anchor the next chapter of Wharf dining isn't close. The restaurants that already anchor it, Abalonetti's Bar and Grill, Old Fisherman's Grotto, Domenico's on the Wharf, and Rockfish Harbor Grill, still serve the abalone dishes that trace back to Pop Ernest Doelter's 1908 restaurant on the same wharf. That lineage isn't waiting on anyone's lease.
Two Wharf Walks in a Row Didn't Happen
Here's a smaller, stranger gap in the calendar. The Wharf Walk, Monterey's free monthly history tour, normally runs the first Saturday of every month from 10 a.m. to noon, meeting at the head of the Wharf near the pink Harbor House. It's been going for years, led by historian Tim Thomas, a fourth-generation Monterey native and former curator at the Monterey Maritime & History Museum.
According to the Wharf's own events page, there was no July walk because of the Fourth of July, and no walk on August 1 either. The reason for the second skip is more interesting than a holiday. It's the Abalone Festival.
The Man Who Runs Both Calendars
Tim Thomas isn't just the Wharf's historian. He's on the board of directors of the Japanese American Citizens League and serves as curator of the JACL's Heritage Center. So when the JACL Hall programs a major weekend event, the same person who leads the Wharf's monthly tour is the one running it. There's no scheduling conflict between two organizations here. There's one historian with two jobs, and in early August, the bigger one wins.
The Abalone Festival itself is young. Its first run happened July 26 and 27, 2025, a two-day event at the JACL Hall on Adams Street built around the abalone-diving history that funded both that hall and the Wharf itself. Its second run moved to August 1 and 2, 2026, landing squarely on the Wharf Walk's usual date. Given who's running both, that's not a coincidence so much as a scheduling reality. A one-year-old festival honoring the industry that built the neighborhood now outranks the older monthly tour on the calendar of the one man who leads them both.
If you live nearby and have been meaning to catch a Wharf Walk, the practical note is this: it normally returns to its regular first-Saturday slot the following month once a skip like this happens. Reservations run through the Monterey Public Library at 831-646-3933, and the walk itself is free.
The Bigger Disruption Starts Tomorrow
Car Week is a different scale of interruption entirely. Starting August 7 and running through August 17, the Wharf hosts its own programming tied to the event, including a "Cars, Cocktails & Calamari" stretch billed for August 7 through August 16. A few blocks away at the Stanton Center, the Monterey History and Art Association is running "Racing to Del Monte & Pebble Beach," a motoring history exhibit covering the same August 7 to 17 window.
For a resident, this is the week the Wharf's parking, foot traffic, and dinner reservations stop behaving like a normal Tuesday. It's also the closest thing the neighborhood has to a predictable, once-a-year disruption that has nothing to do with any restaurant lease. Car Week arrives on schedule whether or not the fish market ever opens.
What's Already Locked In for Fall and Winter
None of the neighborhood's remaining big dates depend on construction progress either. Based on the Wharf's published calendar, here's what's confirmed for the rest of 2026:
- September 11 to 13: the 93rd annual Festa Italia at Custom House Plaza, adjacent to the Wharf
- December 4 to 20: the 10th annual Christmas on the Wharf, with Santa visits and holiday displays
Both are long-running institutions with double-digit or triple-digit anniversary counts. Compare that to the Abalone Festival's second year, or the fish market's still-unbuilt shell, and the pattern gets clearer. The Wharf's oldest traditions keep their dates. Its newest additions, whether a festival or a restaurant, are the ones still finding their footing on the calendar.
Old Fisherman's Wharf itself is open 365 days a year, holidays included, a detail worth knowing if you're new to the area and assumed otherwise. The businesses change. The vacancy on the corner where Scales used to be will eventually fill. But the operating rhythm of the place, the walks, the festivals, the whale watching boats that run year-round out of Monterey Harbor, doesn't pause for any of it.
The Takeaway for Anyone Who Actually Lives Here
The easy story about this stretch of Monterey is "we're waiting on the big seafood restaurant." That story isn't wrong, exactly. It's just incomplete, and it puts the emphasis in the wrong place. The Wharf's actual 2026 has been defined by things that happened on schedule: a historian juggling two institutions, a Car Week that shows up every August regardless of what's under construction, and holiday and heritage events now old enough to count their anniversaries in the double digits.
When San Pedro Fish Market does open, on whatever date its 2027 target eventually becomes, it'll be joining a neighborhood that spent the intervening years running just fine without it.
If you're the kind of person who tracks a neighborhood this closely, whether because you live two blocks off the Wharf or you're weighing whether this stretch of Monterey fits how you actually want to spend your weekends, Truszkowski Freedman & Associates spends the same kind of attention on the Monterey Peninsula's other pockets, from Pebble Beach to Big Sur to Carmel Valley. Work With Us when you're ready to talk about any of them.
