The stretch of Route 72 between the Parkway and the causeway used to be a place you drove through on the way to somewhere else. This summer it's a place that's rebuilding itself. A grocery store the size of a small airport terminal opened where the K-Mart used to sit. The library on North Main is packing up for a bigger building south of the lake. Two restaurants that weren't here last summer are now taking orders on Bay Avenue.
If you live in Stafford, you already know the seasonal rhythm. What's worth paying attention to this year is how much of that rhythm has quietly shifted addresses.
The Route 72 anchor changed hands, and buildings
The single biggest change to weekly errands in Manahawkin is the new ShopRite. The grand opening ribbon cutting happened Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026 at 7 a.m., with the store located at 733 Route 72 West on the old K-Mart site. At 116,000 square feet, the new store is larger than the previous one.
For anyone who spent years walking the old aisles, the switch is more than square footage. The Saker family, who acquired the old Manahawkin store from the Perlmutter family, are using the move to put their full brand on display. That means an expanded prepared-foods section, wider produce runs, and a footprint built around the way people actually shop in a shore town during July, when a week's cart looks nothing like a week's cart in February.
The practical upshot: parking on Route 72 during Saturday morning peak now flows through a lot designed for it, instead of the retrofitted one across the highway. If you've been avoiding grocery runs between 10 a.m. and noon on summer weekends, it's worth trying again.
Two new plates on Bay Avenue
Bay Avenue picked up two additions worth knowing by name.
- El Rinconcito De Mexico opened inside the Manahawkin Mart Shoppes plaza. The address is 657 E. Bay Ave. The restaurant describes itself as family owned and operated, and says it prides itself on serving more than the mainstream Mexican dishes. The menu runs from al pastor and grilled chicken to buche, tripa, pork or beef head tacos, and birria. Tortas, alambres, and huaraches round it out. If your default Tuesday takeout has been the same rotation for five years, this is the one to break it on.
- Salad House is coming to Manahawkin Plaza. The chain, which serves sandwiches, wraps, bowls, and salads, signed a lease for a location in Manahawkin Plaza, according to local realtor Rudy Daunno. The nearest existing location is in Toms River, which opened in May 2023. The first Salad House opened in 2011 in Millburn, founded by Springfield native Joey Cioffi, who vacations on Long Beach Island and has said the franchise is searching for more Central Jersey locations.
The pattern here matters. Two of the newer food openings this year came from operators with a stated interest in the LBI corridor, not from national chains dropping a pin on a map. That's a different kind of local growth than the one Route 72 saw a decade ago.
The library is moving, briefly disappearing, and coming back bigger
If you use the Stafford Branch of the Ocean County Library, the summer plan needs an adjustment. The branch at 129 North Main Street closes on May 1, 2026 to prepare for the opening of a new Stafford Branch at 179 South Main Street in Manahawkin.
For families who built a Tuesday morning around story hour or teens who ran out the AC there in July, the gap window is real. Neighboring branches in Barnegat and Long Beach Island are the obvious substitutes for holds pickups and quiet study, and Ocean County Library's app handles reservation transfers without a re-check-in. The new South Main building will land closer to Heritage Park than the current location, which reshuffles the walking geometry of a summer afternoon downtown.
Monday concerts, Tuesday tomatoes
The rest of the summer calendar sits where residents have come to expect it.
Heritage Park and Manahawkin Lake Park are still doing double duty as the town's warm-weather living room.
The farmers market runs on Tuesdays at Heritage Park during the summer season, with the pop-up evening markets timed to the Monday concert series at Manahawkin Lake Park. In prior seasons the Stafford Recreation Department scheduled four farm markets on selected dates that coincided with the Monday concerts at Manahawkin Lake Park, starting at 4 p.m. and ending at dusk. Stafford Township has confirmed the summer concert series and pop-up farmers market are back this year.
The reason to pay attention to the Monday pairing rather than the Tuesday standalone: the Monday events are the ones that draw the mix of year-rounders and short-term renters from the island. If part of what makes summer in Manahawkin worth the traffic is seeing which neighbors show up for corn on the lawn, Monday is the one.
The dinner rotation is still worth defending
The new openings sit inside a rotation that hasn't budged. A few worth reminding yourself of before you default to the same three:
- The Old Causeway Steak & Oyster House. OpenTable currently lists it as the best-reviewed restaurant in Manahawkin.
- The Mainland Kitchen + Pub. The dependable option for a weeknight dinner that doesn't want to be a project.
- Mud City Crab House. Outdoor dining season is short, and the crab cakes are still what they are.
- Dolce Liberta. Made-to-order modern Italian, with a focus on private events and catering.
None of these are new to you. The point of listing them is that the summer of 2026 is the first one in a while where the "new opening" list and the "old reliable" list are both worth reading. Usually one of them is thin.
The through-line
Here's what ties the ShopRite move, the library relocation, the two new restaurants, and the returning market schedule together. Every one of them is happening on the mainland side of the causeway, on streets that a year-round resident uses more than a summer visitor does. Manahawkin's summer used to feel like a spillover of Long Beach Island's summer. This year the town is running its own program.
That has quiet implications for anyone paying attention to what a home here is actually worth. A mainland address that used to be valued mostly as a shorter drive to the beach is now attached to a growing daytime economy of its own. When people ask what changed in Manahawkin in 2026, the answer isn't a single ribbon cutting. It's the fact that four different ones are stacked inside the same twelve months, on the same three roads.
If you've been curious what that shift means for the value of your own house or the timing of a move within the township, Shari L Rinaldi is happy to talk it through over coffee or a quick walk of the property. Schedule a free consultation or run an instant home valuation whenever the summer schedule gives you a quiet hour.
