Yesterday felt like another important day in Pacific Palisades.

On Wednesday, August 19, the Pacific Palisades Farmers Market returned to Swarthmore Avenue at Palisades Village for the first time since the January 2025 fire. After everything our community has experienced, seeing those white tents lining the street again meant much more to me than having a place to buy fresh produce and flowers.

It felt like another little piece of our community coming home.

Every Reopening Matters in Pacific Palisades

Since the fire, I have come to appreciate things I probably once took for granted.

A business reopening matters. A school welcoming students back matters. A familiar gathering place returning matters. And now, having our Farmers Market back every Wednesday matters too.

Yesterday, the Village was full of people. Schools have started again in the Palisades, so there were children and families walking around. I ran into friends. Rick Caruso was there. There was a big line at Alfred Coffee. For a few hours, there was the wonderful feeling of people simply being together in their neighborhood again.

I bought a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

Looking at those flowers later, I thought about how appropriate they seemed for this moment in Pacific Palisades.

We are not back to what life looked like before the fire. There is still construction everywhere. There is dust. There are empty lots and businesses that have not returned. Many families are still rebuilding their homes and their lives.

But there are also signs of growth.

Maybe that is what rebuilding actually looks like. Not one dramatic moment when everything suddenly becomes normal again, but hundreds of smaller moments when something begins to bloom.

What This Means for Pacific Palisades Real Estate

As a real estate broker and a longtime resident of Pacific Palisades, I also look at these moments through the lens of our local housing market.

Real estate is about much more than the structure of a house or the price of a property. People choose communities because of the life surrounding their homes.

They care about schools, restaurants, coffee shops, parks, local businesses and places where they can run into neighbors. They care about whether a community feels alive and connected.

That is why the return of a Farmers Market matters for Pacific Palisades real estate too.

One Farmers Market cannot tell us what home values will do, and I would never suggest that it can. But every business that reopens, every school that welcomes children back and every community tradition that returns helps restore the everyday life that makes a neighborhood a place people want to call home.

I hope we continue to see more businesses return to the Palisades in the months ahead.

Sometimes Rebuilding Means Getting Away From Rebuilding

A few days ago, I did something completely different with my three children.

I had been meaning to take them to The Gentle Barn in Santa Clarita, and we finally went.

We spent time with the animals, brushed a cow and, one by one, each of my children hugged her. I did too.

There was something wonderfully peaceful about standing next to this enormous, gentle animal.

For a little while, there were no construction trucks, no construction dust and no conversations about rebuilding. There was just a cow, three children, their mom and a very different kind of afternoon.

I don’t know exactly how the experience of the fire will stay with my children as they grow older. I don’t know exactly how it will stay with me either.

But I do know that getting away from our daily surroundings for a few hours felt good.

And strangely, standing there brushing and hugging a cow made me think about Pacific Palisades.

Rebuilding Homes and Rebuilding a Community

In real estate, rebuilding can sound very physical.

Plans. Permits. Contractors. Foundations. Walls. Roofs. Landscaping.

Those things are enormously important. We need homes rebuilt.

But a community is not rebuilt with lumber and concrete alone.

It is rebuilt when children return to school. When someone opens the doors of a business again. When neighbors stop to talk. When people stand in line for coffee. When farmers put up their tents. When you unexpectedly see a friend while buying vegetables.

And perhaps it is also rebuilt when a family that has lived through something difficult gives itself permission to leave the construction zone for an afternoon, drive to a barn and hug a cow.

Yesterday, I came home from the Farmers Market with a bouquet of flowers.

For me, those flowers are a small reminder of where Pacific Palisades is today.

We are still rebuilding.

We are still figuring out what “normal” means now.

But little by little, our community is beginning to bloom again.

And I am very grateful to be here to see it.

With gratitude and a heart of service,

Claudia Backus, MBA
California Real Estate Broker | REALTOR®
Serving Pacific Palisades & the Westside