Walk into Steig's Grillhouse on East Seneca Street and ask for the vault. The staff will point you past the bar, through a doorway that used to lead to Onondaga County's cash. The building spent decades as a Marine Midland Bank branch before Jeff Steigerwald and Chuck Madonna, the co-owners of Liehs & Steigerwald Butcher Shop, gutted it into a restaurant, full bar and meat counter. The old vault is now private dining or overflow seating, depending on the night. The drive-thru ATM lane out back is becoming outdoor seating.
That would be a fun one-off story on its own. But look around Manlius this fall and it stops being an anecdote and starts looking like a pattern. The Taco Bell down the road is inside a 1968 firehouse. The bakery that just celebrated its first anniversary on Fayette Street used to be somebody else's storefront too. And the space where Salt City Bread baked its last loaf this past spring is about to reopen under a different name entirely. Nothing new is being built in the village core right now. Everything new is moving into something old.
The Bank That Became a Butcher Shop's Second Act
Steigerwald and Madonna aren't new to the restaurant business, they're returning to it. Their downtown Syracuse pub closed during the pandemic, and this summer they went to work on the former bank at 228 East Seneca Street instead of starting from scratch somewhere new. By the time Steig's Grillhouse opened its doors in August, renovations had turned the old teller floor into a dining room and bar, with a meat counter up front stocked from the Liehs & Steigerwald name people already trust from Grant Boulevard.
Opening week ran ahead of what the kitchen was ready for. The restaurant told local reporters that customer volume forced a temporarily limited menu while staff ramped up, with fuller offerings promised in the weeks that followed. If you tried Steig's in its first days and found half the board unavailable, that's why, and it's worth a second visit now that the kitchen has had a month to catch up.
The Firehouse That Got a Liquor License
Four Stickley Drive spent 49 years as Manlius's Third Station, built in 1968 and notable enough in its own right to be the first firehouse in Onondaga County with a fire pole on the second floor. The department moved to a new location on Cazenovia Street in 2017, and the old building sat empty until Hospitality Syracuse bought it in April 2024.
What went in wasn't a straightforward fast food remodel. The Manlius location became Central New York's first Taco Bell Cantina, a format that adds beer, wine, canned cocktails and a rotating lineup of Twisted Freezes to the standard menu, all consumed on site rather than through the drive-thru. It opened on November 19, 2025, with seating for 80 to 90 people and four apartments built into the second floor. Can deposit proceeds go to the F-M Booster Club, and the space now hosts trivia nights and live music on a building that used to hold engines and hoses.
Getting there wasn't automatic. The Village Board's vote on the project ended in a tie before passing 3-2 on a second try. Former Mayor Paul Whorrall pushed the case for saying yes plainly:
"We got to have this. If we don't, we won't have anything."
His successor, Mayor Hank Chapman, has kept using the firehouse as the example of what he wants more of on Main Street, framing it as proof that a vacant landmark can be preserved and reactivated at the same time rather than torn down for something generic.
Here's how the village's four active reuse projects stack up against each other:
| Building | Original Use | Vacant Before Reuse | Now Open As |
|---|---|---|---|
| 228 E. Seneca St. | Marine Midland Bank branch | Several years | Steig's Grillhouse (Aug. 2026) |
| 4 Stickley Dr. | Manlius Fire Dept., built 1968 | 2017 to 2024 | Taco Bell Cantina (Nov. 2025) |
| 343 Fayette St. | Prior retail storefront | Under a year | Holland Farms Bakery & Deli (Aug. 2025) |
| Cazenovia Rd. plaza | Salt City Bread | Since spring 2026 | Sammy's NYC Grill (opening late Sept. 2026) |
The Bakery That Already Proved the Model Works
Holland Farms didn't need to guess whether Manlius would support a reuse project, because the Utica bakery's own opening already answered that question. The 70-year-old, family-run business chose 343 Fayette Street for its first Syracuse-area location in August 2025, and by the time it marked one year in the village this past August, owner Heather Potrzeba was telling reporters the community's support had been strong enough to justify expanding further. Two more locations, in Camillus and Cicero, are now in the works, with the Camillus store taking over a building that itself has a reuse history: a former Friendly's that had already been converted once into the Second Chance Diner before Holland Farms signed the lease.
If you haven't been in for the half moons, jelly buns or tomato pie yet, the one-year mark is a reasonable prompt to finally stop.
The Space Salt City Bread Left Behind
Not every closure in the village gets filled this fast. Salt City Bread, the bakery and sandwich shop off Cazenovia Road near Walgreens, closed last spring and sat empty for months. That gap is about to close too. Sammy Khubani, who already runs Sammy's NYC Deli & Grill in North Syracuse, is opening a second location in the old Salt City Bread space. As of early September, the buildout was reported at roughly 90 percent complete, with a target opening before the end of the month pending final inspections.
The Manlius menu will run smaller than the North Syracuse original, but the fan favorites are staying: breakfast sandwiches, smashed and charcoal burgers, gyros, wraps, wings, Philly cheesesteaks and fresh juices. Khubani grew up in the deli business in New York City before relocating to the Syracuse area, and this will be his second shot at bringing that format to Central New York.
Why Manlius Keeps Choosing the Old Building Over the Empty Lot
None of this is a coincidence, and it isn't really about food either. Village leadership has been explicit that filling existing landmarks is the strategy, not a byproduct of one. Mayor Chapman has described the firehouse project as the template for what he wants to keep happening on Main Street, and the pattern holds across every example above: a bank floor, a firehouse bay, a bakery storefront, a bread shop's lease, all reactivated instead of replaced. For a village with a small, walkable commercial footprint, that's less about nostalgia and more about the fact that there isn't a lot of undeveloped land left to build on. The buildings people already recognize are the inventory.
If you're mapping out where that leaves your next visit to the village:
- Steig's Grillhouse, 228 E. Seneca St., open now with an expanding menu after a slower-than-planned opening week
- Taco Bell Cantina, 4 Stickley Dr., open since November with alcohol service and a live event calendar
- Holland Farms Bakery & Deli, 343 Fayette St., open and past its one-year mark
- Sammy's NYC Grill, Cazenovia Road plaza near Walgreens, expected to open before the end of September pending inspection sign-off
Manlius isn't getting bigger this year. It's getting reused, one landmark at a time, and the village looks better fed for it.
Whether you're grabbing a half moon on Fayette Street or watching the vault door swing open at Steig's, Manlius keeps proving that its best real estate is the kind that already has a story attached. If you're curious what that same instinct for reuse and revitalization means for home values in the village, Jeremy Allen tracks that alongside the rest of the Syracuse market and is glad to talk through what it looks like on your street.
