For a long time, the honest answer to "what's going on in Clemmons this weekend" started and ended with Tanglewood Park. The 1,100-acre former Reynolds estate, its arboretum, its two golf courses, the Festival of Lights in December — that was the calendar. If you lived here, you already knew.
Late summer 2026 is the season the answer changed.
The center of gravity for a Clemmons Saturday has shifted about three miles east, to a stretch of South Peace Haven Road that now holds the farmers market, the greenway loop, the September road race, and a 12.42-acre parcel that will be a working village amenity within a year. This post is a field guide to that shift — what's on between now and the first weekend of October, what's opening on Stratford, and what the ground crew at Village Point is actually building next to the fishing pier.
The Saturday morning that moved
The Clemmons Farmers Market runs Saturdays from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the Jerry Long Family YMCA, 1150 S. Peace Haven Rd., in the front parking lot most weeks and out in the field when youth sports overlap. That's the anchor. Everything else on Peace Haven now schedules itself around it.
The big date to circle: Saturday, August 15, when the Food Truck Festival and Car Show takes over the same YMCA lot starting at 4 p.m. It is the kind of event that used to require a drive to Winston-Salem, and it lands in the same parking lot the market uses that morning. If you plan the day right, you never move your car.
Then the calendar tightens:
- Saturday, September 12 — Dirty Dozen 5K, Fun Run, Obstacle Mud Run, and Clemmons Oktoberfest, staged at 1150 S. Peace Haven Rd. with a 7:30 a.m. start.
- Saturday, September 12 — Wandering Shire Book Market, 10 a.m., at Be Kind Coffee Co., 3560 Clemmons Rd., Suite B. Same day, different vibe, five minutes apart.
- Friday, October 31 — Halloween Costume Party at Village Square Tap House with Pandora's Jukebox and the Jill Goodson Band.
If you have out-of-town family visiting Labor Day weekend, that August 15 into September 12 window is the easiest sell Clemmons has had in years.
What's actually being built next to the fishing pier
The Village Point Greenway itself is not new. It's a roughly three-quarter-mile paved loop around Village Point Lake, with a wheelchair-accessible fishing pier, three wooden bridges, and a stocked lake that regularly turns up largemouth bass, bluegill, crappie, and catfish. Locals know it. What most residents haven't fully absorbed is what's going up on the other side of the tree line.
In August 2024, the Village of Clemmons closed on 12.42 acres adjacent to the greenway, purchased from Novant Health for $1.9 million. Ground broke in August 2025 on the Village Point Operations Center — a two-story, roughly 3,500-square-foot building that will house Forsyth County Sheriff's Office deputies, village staff, storage, and public bathrooms open during greenway hours. As of the October 30, 2025 council update from Village Manager Mike Gunnell, grading was about 95% complete, footings were being dug, and the building was on schedule for a spring 2026 completion.
The building is the small news. The bigger news is the remaining 10.92 acres. The concept list village leaders circulated at the public input session at the Clemmons Branch Library includes an amphitheater or performance space, a permanent farmers market pad, outdoor pickleball courts, multipurpose sports courts, a bike path, a splash pad, picnic tables, and passive green space. None of those are guaranteed. But even one or two of them arriving on that parcel changes what the Peace Haven corridor is for.
For a resident, the practical read is this: the Saturday routine you build around the YMCA lot right now is the routine you'll still be using in three years, just with a shorter walk to the market stalls and a covered stage a few hundred feet away.
The Stratford Road turnover
The other axis of late-summer news in Clemmons is the eastern edge, where South Stratford Road spills toward Winston-Salem and restaurant spaces have been rotating faster than usual.
At 3260 S. Stratford Road, the space that used to be Cimarron Steakhouse became Hawgfish Shack, a seafood and barbecue concept that opened this spring. Miam Breakfast House, the Triad breakfast operator whose Greensboro location on Lawndale Drive and Winston-Salem location on S. Stratford draw weekend waits, announced its third location for Clemmons this spring, taking a space along the same corridor. That's three brand-new sit-down options in eighteen months on one road.
Add in the fixtures that aren't going anywhere:
- Full Moon Oyster Bar, 1473 River Ridge Dr., for the steamed shellfish and the porch.
- Villa Grille, off I-40 for flatbreads and the spinach salad the regulars order without opening the menu.
- 2520 Tavern and Clemmons Kitchen for the weekday breakfast and lunch rhythm.
- Bodine's, 6353 Cephis Dr., which booked The Piedmont Boys back in June and has stayed loud most weekends since.
The pattern worth noticing: the newer openings all sit east of Lewisville-Clemmons Road, closer to the Winston-Salem line, while the daily-life spots (Villa Grille, Full Moon, 2520) hold the middle of the village. If you're deciding where to take out-of-town friends, that geography matters. East for the new thing, middle for the reliable one.
Tanglewood is still Tanglewood
None of this means the old default has weakened. Tanglewood Park at 4061 Clemmons Rd. still holds 1,100 acres between the village and the Yadkin River. The Arboretum's 26 gardens are at their late-summer peak right now. Mallard Lake is open for paddleboats. The Aquatic Center runs 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. with a $8 admission. The Championship Course, laid out by Robert Trent Jones, Sr., is the one that hosted the 1974 PGA Championship, won by Lee Trevino a stroke ahead of Jack Nicklaus — a piece of trivia that comes up more often than you'd think when you're standing on the tenth tee with a visitor.
What's changed is that Tanglewood is no longer carrying the whole weekend. It's one of three or four places a Clemmons resident actually rotates through, instead of the only place worth the drive.
A residents' late-summer schedule, if you want one
Saturday, August 8 — Farmers Market, 8:30 a.m., Jerry Long YMCA. Village Inn Card Show for anyone in the family who collects.
Saturday, August 15 — Farmers Market in the morning; Food Truck Festival and Car Show, 4 p.m., same lot.
Late August — Arboretum walk at Tanglewood, early evening, before the golfers finish on the Reynolds Course.
Any Friday — Full Moon Oyster Bar patio, then a lap around Village Point Lake before it gets fully dark at 9 p.m.
Saturday, September 12 — Dirty Dozen 5K and Oktoberfest at the Y; Wandering Shire Book Market at Be Kind Coffee Co. by mid-morning.
Friday, October 31 — Village Square Tap House costume party.
If you use even half of that as a Google Calendar dump, you'll have covered more of Clemmons in eight weeks than most residents cover in a year.
The quiet takeaway
The Peace Haven-to-Stratford axis is doing something Clemmons hasn't really had before: a compressed set of destinations you can walk between the pieces of, or drive between in under ten minutes, with a coherent weekly rhythm. Tanglewood remains the postcard. But the working village — the market, the greenway, the new operations center, the restaurants turning over on Stratford — has moved onto Peace Haven Road and shows every sign of staying there.
If you already live here, the practical move is to stop treating any of these as one-off outings and start treating them as a route. Once a month is a habit. Once a week is a village.
If you're considering a move within Clemmons, or you have friends asking what the village actually feels like day to day, Lane Real Estate Agency is happy to walk the corridor with you and talk through what's changed. Book a free consultation and we'll bring the map.
