Drive East Seneca Street in the Village of Manlius right now and you will pass a former bank that now serves steaks and butcher-shop favorites, a former firehouse that mixes cocktails, and a construction site across from Bruegger's Bagels that's about to become apartments over a burger joint. None of it is new construction in the sprawl sense. Almost all of it is old buildings getting a second life, and that distinction matters more than the headline count of "new businesses" that local news has been running all year.
The easy version of this story is a list: five things opened, three more are coming. The more useful version, for anyone who already parks on Fayette or Seneca Street most weeks, is what the list actually reveals. Manlius isn't adding square footage. It's recirculating the buildings it already had, funded in part by public grant money and in part by developers betting that a decommissioned bank lobby is worth more as a dining room than as another vacant storefront.
The Bank, the Firehouse, and the Car Dealership
Start with the building at 228 East Seneca Street, right where Routes 92 and 173 split. It sat empty for years after Marine Midland Bank moved out. In August, it reopened as Steig's Grillhouse, run by Jeff Steigerwald and Chuck Madonna, the same team behind Liehs & Steigerwald Butcher Shop on Grant Boulevard in Syracuse. The old ATM drive-through is now an outdoor patio. Local artist Mark Noble painted murals inside. The grand opening landed on August 12, and the restaurant is running fast-casual for now, with plans to add full waitstaff service on weekends once the kitchen catches its footing.
A few blocks away sits a firehouse built in 1965 and opened in 1968, the first volunteer firehouse in Onondaga County to have a fire pole on its second floor. The department moved out in 2017. Hospitality Syracuse bought the building in April 2024 and turned it into the Manlius Cantina, a Taco Bell concept with a full bar, local beer, and trivia nights. It's the first Cantina format in Central New York, and it comes with a community room the village can book for free.
And down the street from the Manlius Art Cinema, across from Bruegger's Bagels, a three-story, 15,000-square-foot building called Icon Place has been under construction since last fall. The developer, Icon Companies, has said the project will house 14 apartments over a ground-floor restaurant called Stacked, with a menu built around burgers, hand-breaded chicken cutlet sandwiches, and a full bar. The company's own timeline pointed to completion by summer 2026. If it has not opened its doors by the time you read this, it is close.
Three very different buildings. Three very different reuses. That's the pattern, not the exception.
What's Actually Opening for Dinner
| Business | Building or former use | Status as of September 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Steig's Grillhouse | Former Marine Midland Bank, 228 E. Seneca St. | Open since August 12, 2026 |
| Manlius Cantina (Taco Bell) | Former village firehouse, built 1968 | Open |
| Stacked | New construction inside Icon Place | Targeted for summer 2026 completion |
| Sammy's NYC Grill | Former Salt City Bread space, Cazenovia Road plaza | Reported roughly 90 percent complete, targeting late September 2026 |
| Crepe Time Cafe | Planned addition to the Pavone's Pizza and Pavone Law Office building | Announced, building revamp pending |
| Holland Farms bakery | New storefront | Open since summer 2025 |
The Sammy's NYC Grill move is worth a second look because it answers a question a lot of residents have been asking since Salt City Bread closed last spring. Owner Sammy Khubani already runs Sammy's NYC Deli and Grill in North Syracuse, open about a year, known for oversized breakfast sandwiches and charcoal burgers. He grew up in the deli business in New York City before relocating to the Syracuse area. The Manlius location was reportedly close to finished as of early September, waiting mainly on inspections before opening.
The Part of the Story That Isn't a Success Story Yet
Not every space on East Seneca Street has filled as fast as the restaurants. The storefront next to Starbucks that used to house a Well Now urgent care has sat empty long enough that residents have been asking the village mayor about it directly. Hank Chapman has said the village is working with the developer to find a new tenant, but as of the most recent local reporting, nothing had been finalized.
The old car dealership building next door is an even longer project. Village officials have confirmed they're in discussions about turning it into a mixed-use building, but there's no finished plan yet. It's a reminder that adaptive reuse in a village this size doesn't move at the same speed for every building. A bank became a restaurant in under two years. A car dealership is still in the meeting stage.
That unevenness is useful information if you live here. The corridor is genuinely changing, but not uniformly, and not on a schedule anyone can promise.
Where the Money Is Coming From
Village Mayor Hank Chapman has pointed to over three million dollars in grants the village secured to help fund storefront facade work and park improvements, money that is visible in the fresh paint on Moss & Mint, a home décor and gift shop run by Alyssa Mark, and on the building housing Manlius General Supply Co., a modern general store carrying fresh produce, prepared foods, and locally made housewares. That public money is seeding private investment rather than replacing it. The facade grants make a storefront presentable. The restaurant buildouts, the apartment construction at Icon Place, and the butcher shop owners' decision to reopen in a vacant bank are all private bets layered on top of that public groundwork.
It's worth noting who's placing those bets. Monica Browning, who already owned a photography studio in the village, opened Of Moose and Mind Bookshop at 137 East Seneca Street with her husband, betting on a second business in the same three blocks rather than expanding somewhere else. That's a small but telling signal about confidence in the corridor specifically, not just the village in general.
The Village Didn't Stop at Storefronts
The same stretch of East Seneca and Fayette Street picked up a new outdoor gathering point this year too. The Village of Manlius paired its 2026 Summer Concert Series with a brand new farmers market, both running on Mondays from June 29 through August 10, with live music at the Village Centre Amphitheater from 6:30 to 8 p.m. and market vendors set up in the adjacent parking lot from 4 to 8 p.m. That run wrapped up before Labor Day, but it's worth watching for next summer if you missed it, since it was the first year the village paired the two events. The Manlius Antique and Classic Car Cruise ran on those same Monday evenings behind Sno Top on Fayette Street, starting May 25.
The village's annual Swan Festival, tied to the Swan Pond that gives the village one of its more recognizable landmarks, is part of the fall calendar as well, with games, an art show, and food alongside the pond where the resident swan, known locally as Manlius Manny, has become enough of a fixture to earn a name.
None of this is disconnected from the restaurant openings. A village that's investing grant money in storefronts and adding a weekly market and concert series is making the same bet from two directions: give people more reasons to park once and stay on foot for a few hours.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
The honest takeaway isn't that Manlius is booming in some abstract sense. It's that a specific half-mile stretch of East Seneca Street is absorbing almost all of the visible change, and it's happening through reuse of buildings that were already part of the village's memory rather than through new development on open land. A bank, a firehouse, and eventually a car dealership are becoming a restaurant, a bar, and something not yet decided. That's a different kind of growth than a new plaza going up on the edge of town, and it's the kind that tends to change daily errands before it changes anything else. Fewer reasons to drive to Fayetteville or DeWitt for a sandwich or a gift. More reasons to walk two blocks instead.
If you've been watching the construction fencing outside Icon Place or wondering what's taking so long with the old car dealership, that patience is buying something real. It just isn't buying it on the same schedule for every building.
If any of this has you thinking about what your own property is worth in a village that's actively reinvesting in itself, Jeremy Allen can walk you through it. Get Your Instant Home Valuation and see what the numbers say about your corner of Manlius right now.
