Livorna Park's Summer Concerts Are Taking 2027 Off. Every Bid to Rebuild the Park Came In Over Budget.

In July 2026, four evening concerts at Livorna Park drew about 3,600 people to a park with 13 parking spaces. In 2027 the count will be zero. The Alamo Municipal Advisory Council's summer events report says no events will take place next year "due to the upcoming Livorna Park Improvements Project," and that summer programming is scheduled to return in summer 2028.

The pause is the price of a park Alamo residents spent four years designing. The bids opened in October show that the park costs more than any MAC member proposed when that design began.

Four Bands on the Lawn Off Miranda Avenue

The 2026 season shows how much the series has grown. The county's summary lists four July shows with these attendance figures:

1. The Sun Kings, 1,150 attendees
2. Forejour, 1,000 attendees
3. Fog City Swampers, 850 attendees
4. Highway Vagabonds, 600 attendees

Signature Burgers ran the food truck, and the report calls it "very successful." It recommends keeping a single food truck vendor at future events. The report also mentions a problem the renovation is meant to address: the gazebo's power supply hurt audio quality during the louder sets.

The film nights have already stopped. The same report says no Movies Under the Stars events were held in 2026 "due to park construction." The concerts go next. The report says vendor and artist selection for 2028 starts in fall 2027, so planning for the next season begins while the park is still a work site.

About 64 Weeks of Work

The county's environmental filing, a Notice of Exemption posted April 29, 2026, estimated about 320 working days of construction. At five working days a week, that is about 64 weeks, well over a year of active work.

The same filing lists the work:

• Replacing the 8,400-square-foot playground and adding shade sails, shade structures, umbrellas and play-area seating
• Adding a water play and mister area, with its own water treatment tanks and mechanical equipment
• Expanding the 2,538-square-foot half basketball court to a full court by adding about 3,074 square feet, with two concrete retaining walls about 4 feet tall
• Repairing the bocce court and upgrading the restrooms and park furnishings to meet ADA requirements
• Replacing the entrance trellis with a custom metal arbor, and adding new walkways, signage, lighting, fencing, a drinking fountain and bike racks
• Adding about two parking stalls

The trees change too. About 15 landscape trees are coming out, three of them coast live oaks, along with 7,500 square feet of shrubs. About 58 new trees and 12,500 square feet of native, drought-tolerant planting replace them, and bioretention planters will treat stormwater on site. The filing also lists upgrades to the existing electrical, irrigation and landscaping systems.

A Wish List Alamo Wrote in 2023

Almost every item on that list traces back to resident input. The county's project FAQ says Public Works raised the renovation with Supervisor Candace Andersen's office in March 2022 because the facilities were deteriorating. County playground inspectors had found that the nearly 30-year-old play structure was at the end of its life. The county then ran two resident surveys and held two special meetings at the park. A postcard invitation to the second survey went to every Alamo residence.

After an on-site meeting on August 15, 2023, the MAC sent Public Works a letter dated October 10, 2023 with its top priorities:

Water Feature – replace the "eastern most playground area" (the area with the zip line) and install a splashpad for a range of ages (i.e. toddlers to 12 years old)

Shade, extra parking, pour-in-place surfacing and a new accessible play structure made the same priority list. Full-court basketball "with a pickleball option," renovated restrooms and new light standards were in a second tier the letter called "low hanging fruit." In April 2024, Stantec presented locations and designs for those prioritized amenities at a MAC meeting.

Compare the 2023 letter with the 2026 filing and nearly every priority made it in: the mister area, the shade, the full court and the new playground. Parking is the exception. The MAC asked Public Works to explore "maximum possible additional parking" by paving the flat planting areas on both sides of the lot. The plan adds about two stalls.

The 2023 letter also includes each MAC member's recommended budget. They ranged "from $1.5 million to $3.3 million."

Four Bids Against a $2.52 Million Estimate

The county opened bids on October 14, 2026, for Project No. 205-2601. The architect's base-bid estimate was $2,520,000. The bid opening sheet lists four contractors, and every base bid came in above the estimate:

All four bids also priced two add-on alternates separately from the base. Frontline's were $163,034.16 and $125,688.85.

The bids fall within a fairly tight range of each other, about $489,000 from lowest to highest, and all sit well above the estimate. Even the low bid is about $183,000 more than the highest budget any MAC member suggested in 2023. Only one Alamo business appears in the subcontractor lists: R L Ziegenbein Const, named for restroom improvements on Interstate Grading & Paving's bid.

Alamo's Own Fund Covers the Park

The bid gap matters to Alamo in particular because of how the park is paid for. Livorna Park began as land the Livorna Estates subdivision developer donated instead of paying a park development fee. The park was then built with County Service Area R-7 funds, and that fund still pays for its maintenance. The FAQ says CSA R-7 is "supported by all Alamo residents and businesses" and "can ONLY be spent within the CSA R-7 boundary (Alamo)." The county also no longer classifies Livorna as a neighborhood park. It calls it a community park, "funded by all of Alamo residents."

The same fund pays for smaller items across town. A Board Order dated November 3, 2026, recommends a $2,300 CSA R-7 payment to the Alamo Rotary Foundation for holiday lights at Andrew H. Young Park. A light display and a multimillion-dollar park rebuild draw on the same local source.

Under the FAQ, Supervisor Andersen and the full Board of Supervisors make the final decision on Livorna's improvements, and Andersen has committed to "relying heavily" on the MAC, whose members are all Alamo residents. The MAC's Parks and Recreation subcommittee set its October 29, 2026 meeting aside for a Livorna Park update. MAC meetings are public, and the agendas are posted on the county's Legistar site.

Where Alamo's Calendar Goes in the Meantime

With Livorna off the calendar, Alamo's community events this season are elsewhere along Danville Boulevard.

Hospice East Bay's Alamo Tree of Lights is Tuesday, November 24, at 6 p.m., at the Alamo Women's Club, 1401 Danville Blvd.

Up the boulevard, the Rotary Club of Alamo coordinates the annual holiday tree-lighting festival at Andrew H. Young Park, at Danville Boulevard and Jackson Way. That is the event the $2,300 CSA R-7 payment would light. In late October, county crews pruned a tree at the park to get it ready for the festivities.

The play area at Hemme Station Park got new rubber surfacing starting October 26, and the county's repair notice set November 2 as the reopening date, weather permitting.

If the schedule holds, the next outdoor concert at Livorna will be in summer 2028, on a lawn next to a new mister area and a full basketball court.

If you live near Miranda Avenue and are thinking about selling or buying while Livorna Park is under construction, Black Rose Real Estate follows these projects closely and is glad to walk through it with you. Let's Talk.