Ride the Minuteman Bikeway from East Lexington into the Center on any Tuesday afternoon this August, and you will pass three buildings that looked different a year ago. The back trailer at Berman's Wine and Spirits. The side wall at Busa Wine and Spirits. The block of storefronts at 135-145 Massachusetts Avenue. All three now carry hand-painted murals, finished this summer after a project that started with a call for artists back in the fall of 2024. If you have lived in Lexington for a while, you already know about the Tuesday market at Fletcher Park and the Friday concerts at Emery Park. What you may not have clocked yet is that the stretch of pavement connecting them just got a two-year renovation, and it was built to solve a specific problem the town had already diagnosed in writing.
That problem, according to Lexington's own Center Retail Strategy Report and its 2021 Rapid Recovery Report, was that the businesses closest to the bikeway were nearly invisible to the people riding past them. The reports found that Lexington Center's proximity to the bikeway was an asset nobody was using, and that shop owners along the corridor wanted a real connection to the foot and bike traffic passing twenty feet from their front doors. The town's response was not a new bench or a sign pointing toward Mass Ave. It was public art, funded through the American Rescue Plan Act, aimed at making an ignored stretch of trail impossible to ride past without noticing what's there.
The Corridor the Town Decided to Fix
The town's broader Mural and Site Activation Program, which covers this East Lexington corridor and a companion project down the trail, represents an investment of roughly $100,000 in public art, funded through the American Rescue Plan Act. Three of those walls sit along Massachusetts Avenue in East Lexington: the back trailer at 55 Massachusetts Avenue, the side of Busa Wine and Spirits at 131 Massachusetts Avenue, and the storefront block at 135-145 Massachusetts Avenue. The town selected artists Melissa Pandina and Gabriela Sepulveda from a field of 27 applicants who answered the original call for submissions in October 2024. Pandina, a MassArt-trained painter whose work has shown at the Fitchburg Art Museum and the Berkshire Museum of Art, has also been recording a companion video series called A Stitch in Time, interviewing local immigrants about why they settled in Lexington.
The program's second location sits closer to the Center. The Lexington Center Mural, painted by Medford-based artist Kit Collins at the Lexington History Museums, drew a $12,000 allocation from that same ARPA pool, which left the larger share for the three East Lexington walls. Collins started painting in late May and wrapped a few weeks later, with the final coat of sealant going on in June. Between the two projects, the town has now marked both ends of the walk from East Lexington's business strip to the historic Center with new, permanent visual cues that this is one continuous corridor, not two separate districts.
Jay Abdella, the town's Senior Economic Development Coordinator, called the East Lexington stretch the "Gateway to Lexington" and said the goal was to make the area "more welcoming" and to "encourage foot traffic to our business community." Select Board member Joe Pato, who lives in East Lexington, said the work would "improve the vibrancy of our businesses along the Minuteman Bikeway." The work followed wayfinding signage the town installed in 2024 and was paired with a landscaping pass to clear invasive plants along the same stretch, which suggests this was never meant as a one-off art installation. It reads more like a corridor plan executed in phases.
The Two Nights the Corridor Now Connects
None of this would matter much if the corridor didn't already carry real weekly traffic, and it does, on two different schedules that both run through peak season this month.
The Lexington Farmers' Market moved back to Fletcher Park for the 2026 season, running Tuesdays from 2 to 6:30 p.m. through October 27. The market is producer-only, and its roster reads like a map of families who have been growing and baking in Lexington for generations. Busa Farm has worked land in town since 1919. The family's original property on Lowell Street is now preserved as Lexington Community Farm, and the Busas continue growing vegetables, herbs, and hydroponic greens on private plots across Lexington, Littleton, and South Chelmsford. Fran Busa's daughter Allie runs Busa Flora out of the same market stall, a third-generation farmer turned florist selling specialty cut flowers she grows herself. A few tables over, Bread Obsession sells baguettes and naturally leavened sourdoughs from its shop at 433 Marrett Road, and Art Cooks, a Venezuelan meal business founded in Lexington by Emilia and Arthur, sells arepas and slow-cooked proteins that customers can preorder online.
Three days later, the corridor's other anchor picks up. The Lexington Chamber of Commerce's Summer Concert Series runs Fridays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at Emery Park in Depot Square, July 10 through August 21. The lineup this year moves through genres on purpose:
- July 10 — Honey Steelers, a Lowell-based Americana band mixing cowboy swing with folk and blues
- July 17 — BluesChasers, led by local builder Matt Thenan
- July 31 — School of Rock House Band, young musicians performing classic rock and alternative hits
- August 7 — Ben Rudnick & Friends, family-oriented music built for kids and parents alike
- August 14 — Kadak Chai, a Boston-based band performing Bollywood and Indian fusion, timed to India's Independence Day week
That last date is not a coincidence. The Indian Americans of Lexington host a free Independence Day celebration at Hastings Park the same week, with cricket, dance, a fashion show, and a flag hoisting open to the whole town. The concert series and the community celebration were clearly scheduled to reinforce each other, which tells you something about how deliberately the town's cultural calendar gets built now, not just its retail corridor.
Put the market and the concert series next to each other and a pattern shows up that a single event listing would never surface. Both anchors sit at the two ends of the same bikeway stretch the town just spent two years re-painting. A household in East Lexington that bikes the corridor on a Tuesday to reach Fletcher Park is riding the exact same pavement that now carries a Kit Collins mural near the Center and a Melissa Pandina and Gabriela Sepulveda mural near Busa Wine and Spirits. The rides were always there. The reason to look up while making them is new this year.
What This Means for the Rest of August
The concert series closes on August 21, giving residents two more Fridays to catch it this season. The Tuesday market runs another two and a half months, through October 27, so there's no urgency there. The murals, unlike the events, aren't going anywhere. They're a permanent fixture on a route plenty of Lexington residents already ride without thinking twice about it.
What's worth doing before the season turns is simple: take the bikeway between East Lexington and the Center once on purpose, not just as a shortcut to the market or the concert. Notice the finished wall at Busa Wine and Spirits. Notice the Shops at 135-145 Massachusetts Avenue. The town spent two years and roughly $100,000 trying to get residents to see a stretch of pavement they already use every week. This is the first summer it's finished enough to actually work.
If you're weighing a move into this corridor, or already live along it and are curious what a home near this stretch of the bikeway is actually worth right now, Orit Aviv knows Lexington block by block, not just by median price. Let's Connect.
