Downtown Wayzata Is Rewriting Its Own Sidewalk Rules This Season
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
On July 21, the Wayzata City Council spent real time debating twenty-eight seats and a stretch of sidewalk in front of a clothing store that never asked to be part of the conversation. Councilmember Alex Plechash wanted to know what happens if that storefront, currently home to Chico's, changes hands. What if the next tenant is another restaurant that wants its own frontage back? Community Development Director Alex Sharpe gave the answer that explains why this matters: the city had never before approved a sidewalk café that extends past the storefront of the business holding the permit. Not once. Until this summer.
That single approval is a small piece of local government, but it says something bigger about downtown Wayzata right now. This is a town with one real commercial spine, Lake Street and Broadway Avenue, wedged between the water and a handful of residential blocks. There's nowhere to expand except sideways, into whatever space the neighbors aren't using. This season, more businesses than usual are testing exactly how far that borrowed space can stretch, and the council is having to write new rules in real time to keep up.
The restaurant at the center of the July vote is Eloise, the family-owned spot on Broadway Avenue South from restaurateur Lindsay Pohlad, who also owns The Grocer's Table down the block. The council voted 4-0 to approve a plan that adds 468 square feet to Eloise's existing 165-square-foot patio and provides seating for about 28 guests, extending the dining space south into the public right-of-way in front of Chico's.
Councilmember Dan Koch framed the approval as a trial run rather than a permanent fix. "I love the idea," he told the council. "I'm totally supportive of outdoor seating and maximizing the benefits of being outside and being able to eat outside." He described the rest of the 2026 season as a chance to see how the arrangement actually works before the permit comes back for renewal, since sidewalk café permits in Wayzata are approved year by year, not once and done.
The fine print matters here if you walk that block regularly. City staff flagged that the extra seating could increase parking demand during dinner hours. The furniture and planters in the expanded section have to come off the sidewalk by November 1 each year so the space is clear for snow removal. And because the whole thing sits on city right-of-way rather than Eloise's own property, the council can revisit, amend, or decline the arrangement in a future cycle if the storefront situation changes. The expanded patio is expected to open toward the end of August, once the new furnishings arrive.
Eloise isn't the only business figuring out how to grow inside a downtown that has no room to grow. Three other openings this year show three different ways of doing it.
Belle & Grey opened in May at The Hotel Landing on Lake Street East, filling a restaurant space inside an existing building rather than adding one. Chef de Cuisine Tsu-Hung Liu runs a menu built around wagyu beef tartare, lobster pot pie, and pan-roasted walleye, with a separate room called The Library for smaller, quieter dinners. It's the kind of addition that doesn't touch the sidewalk at all, because the hotel already had the footprint.
Parcelle took the opposite approach. Chef Kamal Mohamed, known for his organic, Los Angeles-inspired cafe in northeast Minneapolis, announced back in January that Wayzata's lakefront would become his first suburban location, and the grab-and-go cafe opened this spring in an 800-square-foot space designed for takeout rather than table service. Mohamed said the move reflected real demand, since many of his regulars already drove in from the suburbs to visit the flagship. He called it rare for a restaurant to be able to grow at all, especially one that doesn't serve alcohol. Instead of competing for patio space on Broadway, Parcelle built something small enough to fit into a gap, meant for grabbing food before a walk along the water or a seat on its own patio in warmer months.
The third workaround skipped downtown Wayzata entirely. Comal, from chef and co-owner Angel Luna and his wife, opened a few minutes west in Long Lake instead. The couple spent 25 years with Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants before striking out on their own through Palm & Pine Hospitality, and they built Comal, named for the flat griddle used across Mexican kitchens for tortillas and other staples, around the idea of an everyday neighborhood spot. "Our goal has always been to create the kind of neighborhood place that becomes part of people's everyday lives," Luna said. When the center of a town is full, sometimes the answer is simply a different address on the same lake.
The squeeze shows up in nightlife too. A proposed two-night concert called HIFI on the Lake, planned for the patio at Macanda Restaurant near the Wayzata Depot and Boatworks area, was tabled by the council before eventually winning approval on a 4-1 vote in June, despite a staff recommendation to deny it. Fitting an outdoor electronic music event onto a restaurant patio in a small lake town apparently takes more paperwork than you'd expect.
Compare that to the two music series that already found their footing years ago and don't need special votes to happen. Sunday Music in the Park runs free from 4:30 to 5:30 in the afternoon on the Great Lawn at The Hotel Landing, a low-key hour that fits neatly around dinner reservations. Across town, the Wayzata Rotary Club's long-running Music by the Lake series brings free concerts to the lawn at the historic 1906 Depot on Wednesday evenings, with food and drinks available for purchase and the Depot's own small railroad museum open on weekends through the fall. One is new-money polish on a hotel lawn. The other is a decades-old community fundraiser at a train station. Both exist in the same three or four blocks.
None of this requires a special trip. It's the same stretch of Wayzata most residents already walk, bike, or drive through weekly, just busier than usual this year.
Taken individually, none of these updates would justify a headline. Taken together, they describe a downtown that's genuinely out of room, where the response to demand isn't a bigger building but a renegotiated sidewalk, a smaller footprint, or a neighboring town three miles up the road. That's a fairly specific kind of growing pain, and it's happening on the same four or five blocks most people here already think of as fixed.
If you've watched these blocks change shape for a while, or you're just curious what else might shift before the patios come in for the season, Johnathan Harvath spends a lot of time on this same stretch of Lake Street and is always glad to compare notes. Let's Connect.
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