Four blocks of Beck Avenue do a lot of work in this neighborhood. From the Saturday market at Oaks by the Bay Park down to the marina where the sun drops behind the shrimp boats, the whole rhythm of a St. Andrews summer sits inside a walk you can finish in ten minutes without hurrying. If you already live here, the useful question isn't what to do this weekend. It's how to stitch the pieces together so you're not driving back and forth across your own neighborhood.
The 2026 calendar is unusually generous on that front. Between a completed Beck Avenue landscaping project, a full evening lineup at the marina restaurants, and two marquee dates within a few weeks of each other, the summer stretch from July through late August lands more anchor events inside the historic district than most recent years have offered.
The Saturday morning anchor
Everything else builds off one fixed point. The Market at St. Andrews runs every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Oaks by the Bay Park, 2715 W. 10th St., and it functions less like an event and more like the neighborhood's living room for four hours a week. The park sits under sprawling old oaks along St. Andrews Bay, which matters in July, when the shade is the difference between browsing and retreating to the car.
The market started as a small community activity in 2004 at the marina pavilion and moved to Oaks by the Bay Park in May 2022. The move added lawn, water views, and enough room to actually loiter. Live music is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., weather permitting, which is a useful piece of timing information if you'd rather show up for produce than for a concert, or vice versa.
If you have never used the market as a springboard for the rest of your day, that is the play this summer. Everything below is inside a short walk of the park.
The Beck Avenue spine
Beck Avenue is the reason the neighborhood works as a single afternoon rather than three separate errands. Within a compressed stretch you can hit shopping, coffee, the small museums, and a full dinner without moving your car. A few of the fixed points worth knowing by address:
- Panama City Publishing Company Museum, 1134 Beck Ave. The publishing site of the area's earliest newspapers, home to more than 70 major historical items including original printing presses, opened as a museum in 2008 with free admission, printing demonstrations, and guided walking tours of Historic St. Andrews. This is the one out-of-town-guest stop that locals underuse.
- The Grocery Kitchen and Taproom, 1010 Beck Ave. A Southern-style, Cajun-inspired menu with 25 craft beers plus whiskey and wine, sitting directly across from the market on a Saturday morning. Locals treat it as the mimosa-and-mid-day-beer stop right across the street from the market.
- Sound Collective, 1113 Beck Ave. Hosts the periodic St Andrews Alley Market that runs on select Saturday afternoons.
- Keep St Andrews Salty, the neighborhood's independent retail hub, 1000 Beck.
A short block off Beck, Finns Island Style Grub at 2808 W. 12th St., serves what it calls FINNS Original Fish Tacos and is closed Mondays but open through evening the rest of the week. This is your lunch answer when the market winds down at 1 p.m. and you are not ready to go home.
Sunset moves the center of gravity
Around 6 p.m. the district shifts from the market side to the marina side. That is where the second half of a St. Andrews summer weekend lives.
Uncle Ernie's Bayfront Grill, overlooking the marina, has meaningfully changed its evening pattern this year. The restaurant is now open until 10 p.m. and features live music nightly, with the sunset over St. Andrews Bay as the draw. The grouper on the menu is sourced from Greg Abrams Seafood, wild-caught Gulf grouper and never frozen, which is the kind of supply-chain detail that separates a marina restaurant from a marina-themed restaurant.
Captain's Table Fish House is the other reference point down here. The original Captain's Table opened at Front Beach and Middle Beach Roads in 1967, burned down, was rebuilt by owner Mitch Holman in the 1990s at the St. Andrews location, and was a community staple for about 25 years until Hurricane Michael wrecked it in 2018. It reopened after a rebuild and remains one of the neighborhood's older institutions.
If you want a shorthand for a summer Saturday: Market by 10, Beck Avenue stroll and lunch by 1, museum or shopping by 3, sunset dinner on the water by 7. That sequence uses roughly one square mile.
Two dates worth blocking off
Summer 2026 has stacked two neighborhood-scale events into a six-week window.
July 4 at Panama City Marina
The July 4th Salute to Freedom festival returns to historic downtown Panama City and the shores of St. Andrews Bay on Saturday, July 4, 2026, from 4:00 to 9:30 p.m., at the Panama City Marina, 1 Harrison Avenue, culminating in a fireworks display to mark 250 years since the founding of the nation. The fireworks begin at 9:00 p.m. over St. Andrews Bay, and event seating is not provided, so plan on a blanket or chairs. The festival is free and open to the public.
For St. Andrews residents, the practical detail is parking. The marina fills up quickly. The neighborhood's own walkability is the asset here. If you live inside the historic district, you can walk to the fireworks from Beck Avenue in the time it takes most people to find a spot.
Play Music on the Porch Day, August 29
St Andrews Play Music On The Porch Day is scheduled for Saturday, August 29, 2026, starting at 3:00 p.m. at Keep St Andrews Salty. It is the neighborhood's version of a global event where residents perform on their porches and front yards. The scale is small and the point is neighborly, which is exactly why it is worth putting on the calendar in a way a larger festival is not.
What's changed on the ground since last summer
The physical district looks different than it did a year ago, and this is where the market-to-marina walk pays off most.
The Beck Avenue FDOT Beautification project held its ribbon cutting on April 25, 2026, adding Florida-friendly plants and landscaping along Beck Avenue through the heart of the St. Andrews District, funded through a partnership between the Florida Department of Transportation and the St. Andrews CRA District. If you have not walked the corridor since spring, the entry at US 98 and Beck reads noticeably differently now.
Behind the scenes, Truesdell Park is getting a new coastal-inspired playground with separate play areas for ages 2 to 5 and 5 to 12 on an artificial turf safety surface, alongside a new parking lot and interior and exterior renovations to the Truesdell Park Clubhouse, with completion anticipated by the end of Fiscal Year 2026. That is a meaningful upgrade to the neighborhood's daily green space, not just a marquee-event improvement.
Farther east in the CRA footprint, Millville Waterfront Park is being developed on 4.2 acres purchased by the CRA in 2008, with plans that began in 2023 for full development including an amphitheater for community events, fishing, and kayaking access. That one is longer horizon, but it is worth knowing about now if you use the water on that side of the peninsula.
The neighborhood is compressing, not sprawling
The reason all of this matters is geographic. Most neighborhoods in Bay County reward a car. St. Andrews rewards leaving it parked. The market, the museums, the shops on Beck, the marina restaurants, and the two big summer events all sit inside a few blocks of each other. When the FDOT beautification finishes settling in and the Truesdell upgrades wrap by year-end, the walkable core gets tighter, not looser.
That is the summer read on St. Andrews in 2026. The events are worth the calendar space. The bigger story is that the district around them keeps getting more usable on foot.
If you own here and are thinking about how the neighborhood's ongoing improvements might factor into your longer-term plans, or you know someone eyeing a move into the historic district, Think Real Estate is happy to talk through what the changes mean block by block. Contact a Local Expert when you're ready.
