Ride the Minuteman Bikeway through Lexington on any weekday afternoon and you will pass more people than you think. The town's own planning documents point to a counter in neighboring Arlington Center that puts average daily use at roughly 3,000 riders and walkers. For years, the town's own economic development staff have quietly worried about a different number: how few of those 3,000 people ever turned off the path and walked into a shop.
That gap between bikeway traffic and business district foot traffic is not a guess. It shows up in Lexington's own Call for Artists documentation, where planners described the buildings backing onto the path as bland and industrial-looking, giving cyclists no visual signal that a café or restaurant sat just behind the wall. The town ran a field study, watched how bikeway users behaved at the business district crossings, and concluded the market was there but largely untapped. This fall is the first season where you can see the fix for that problem instead of just reading about it in a committee packet.
The diagnosis came before the storefronts did
Lexington's response to that turn-off problem has been running for close to two years now, funded through American Rescue Plan Act dollars and split across two linked projects. In East Lexington, artists Melissa Pandina and Gabriela Sepulveda painted a set of murals directly onto the bikeway-facing walls of Berman's Wine and Spirits, Busa Wine and Spirits, and the retail block at 135-145 Massachusetts Avenue, work completed in the summer of 2025. A second, smaller project put muralist Kit Collins on the exterior columns of the Depot Building in Lexington Center itself, a collaboration between the town, the Lexington Center Committee, and the Lexington History Museums, which own the building.
Jay Abdella, the town's senior economic development coordinator, described the stretch of path running past these businesses as the town's real entry point long before the paint went up.
"This portion of the Minuteman Bikeway can be considered the 'Gateway to Lexington.'"
That framing only matters if something is actually waiting for people once they walk through the gateway. Until this year, the honest answer was: not much that felt built for a cyclist specifically. That changed with what is opening on either side of the path this fall and winter.
The café built for the person already standing there
The clearest evidence of the shift is a business that has not opened yet. Commune All Day Cafe is taking over the former Lexington Liquors space at 7 Depot Square, a few steps from the Depot Building murals. Sam and Kinnari Patel, who ran the liquor store and have owned Turnpike Market in Billerica for twelve years, are converting the space into a health-driven, all-day concept: George Howell coffee and breakfast sandwiches in the morning, sandwiches, tacos, and acai bowls through the day, service until 10 p.m., with a beer and wine license in progress. As of late July, the Patels were still securing permits, with an opening planned for winter.
What makes Commune worth watching is not the menu. It is who the owners say they built it for. The café is designed with enough seating for a family meal and enough speed for what the Lexington Observer described as a Minuteman Bikeway cyclist stopping in for a quick smoothie between Depot Square and the rest of the path. That is not incidental language. It is the exact customer the town's 2024 planning document said was being missed.
Not every reopening is about the bikeway, and that is useful to know
It would be tidy to say every bit of commercial movement in Lexington this year traces back to the bikeway strategy. It does not, and the exception tells you something too. A new dual-brand Dunkin' and Jimmy John's opened August 18 at 323 Marrett Road, on a site with Dunkin' history dating back to September 1970, when it opened as the chain's 245th location. That store closed in early 2025 after decades of continuous operation and has now reopened under The Pesce Network, the Massachusetts franchise group that runs more than 60 Dunkin' and Jimmy John's locations statewide. A public ribbon-cutting and grand opening celebration is scheduled for September 12.
Marrett Road is not on the bikeway corridor. This reopening is a straightforward commercial refresh on a car-oriented arterial, the kind of turnover that happens in any town regardless of public art funding. Reading it next to Commune makes the contrast useful rather than confusing: Lexington is absorbing two different kinds of growth at once, one engineered by the town to solve a specific foot-traffic problem along a specific quarter mile of path, and one that is just an aging franchise location getting new ownership and a new coat of paint.
What is actually true right now, block by block
| Spot | Location | Status as of September 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Commune All Day Cafe | 7 Depot Square | Not yet open; permitting in progress, targeting a winter opening |
| Dunkin' / Jimmy John's | 323 Marrett Road | Open since August 18; public grand opening event September 12 |
| East Lexington murals | Berman's, Busa Wine and Spirits, 135-145 Mass Ave | Completed summer 2025, visible now along the bikeway |
| Depot Building columns | Lexington Center | Completed by Kit Collins, visible now |
| Lexington Farmers' Market | Fletcher Park | Running Tuesdays, 2-6:30 p.m., through October 27 |
The calendar window that closes at the end of October
None of this stays this way for long. The Lexington Farmers' Market moved back to Fletcher Park in Lexington Center for its 2026 season and runs weekly on Tuesdays through October 27, closing at 6 p.m. instead of 6:30 once the month turns. After that, the market's last event of the calendar year is a Thanksgiving FEASTival on November 24, also at Fletcher Park, before the season goes quiet until a smaller winter market resumes elsewhere in early 2027.
For anyone who already lives near the Center, that gives you a specific, short window to see the whole picture assembled in one place, on foot, before the weather turns:
- Walk or ride the bikeway past the East Lexington murals at Berman's and Busa, painted specifically to signal there is a business district behind the wall
- Continue into the Center and look up at the Depot Building columns, where Kit Collins' work sits on a building the Lexington History Museums still own and operate
- Catch a Tuesday afternoon at the farmers market in Fletcher Park before the October 27 close
- Watch for the September 12 ribbon-cutting at the Marrett Road Dunkin'/Jimmy John's if that corner of town is part of your regular loop
- Check back on 7 Depot Square as winter approaches, since Commune's opening will likely land somewhere in that season
Why this is worth noticing even if you never plan to move
A town spending roughly a hundred thousand dollars in federal recovery funds on murals is not, by itself, a sign of anything. What makes this fall different is that the diagnosis and the storefronts are finally lined up. Lexington identified a specific, measurable gap between the people already passing through and the people actually walking into its businesses, built the visual cues first, and is now watching the tenants that were missing show up on their own schedule. If you live along this corridor, you are watching a two-year plan complete itself in real time, one storefront at a time, and the next few months are the first chance to see whether the fix actually works the way the town's own planning documents said it should.
If you are weighing a move into Lexington Center or watching how a neighborhood like this holds its value over time, that kind of coordinated public investment is worth factoring into the conversation. FlyBuyBoston, led by Joe Castro, works with buyers and sellers across Greater Boston's core towns and can walk you through what a corridor like this means for a property's long-term position. Let's get started, schedule a consultation with Joe.
