Somers Point's New Openings Are Landing on Two Different Streets This Fall

Nearly every business in Somers Point's current wave of openings still goes by an older name. Ross is in the old Staples. Webster's Tavern is in the Windjammer. Pablo is in the building that was Mexiquila and, before that, Clancy's By the Bay. Chick-fil-A and Panera Bread are going up where McNaughton's Garden Center stood until it closed in 2024. Aldi took over the old Walgreens site on New Road.

The swaps are happening in two places that serve two different parts of the day. The Route 9 and New Road corridor near Bethel Road is getting the weekday errand run. The few blocks around Bay Avenue, Maryland Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard are getting the evenings. Here's how it stands in mid-October.

Route 9 is refilling the errand run

The biggest change on the corridor so far is a store that took over an empty one. Ross Dress for Less moved into the roughly 24,000-square-foot former Staples at Ocean Heights Plaza, near where Ocean Heights Avenue meets New Road. 42 Freeway reported that the store held a soft opening on Friday, Oct. 9, before its announced grand opening on Saturday, Oct. 10. Before that, the closest Ross stores for mainland shore residents were at Hamilton Commons in Mays Landing and on Route 9 in Rio Grande.

Ross also adds to a plaza that already handled a lot of weekly errands. Ocean Heights Plaza is anchored by an 80,734-square-foot ShopRite, and its tenants include Five Below, Dollar Tree, Starbucks, Club Pilates, The UPS Store, Manco & Manco Pizza and Tony Beef. Two more food tenants are planned for newly divided space near Norman's Hallmark. Shore Local reported on Oct. 8 that Dave's Hot Chicken would take about 3,000 square feet and Jersey Mike's Subs about 1,774, and that neither had announced a grand-opening date. The Somers Point Dave's would be the chain's first location in Atlantic County. Until now, the nearest New Jersey locations on its list have included Sicklerville, Cherry Hill and Brick. Jersey Mike's is a local story of its own, going back to Mike's Subs in Point Pleasant in 1956.

A little farther along New Road, Aldi's store locator lists the 425 New Road location as open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day. The project took a while. The Planning Board approved it in April 2023, and the old Walgreens building was down with utilities in place by late 2025.

The longest-running piece is Defeo Plaza at 331 New Road. The Planning Board approved it in March 2025, the garden center buildings came down in 2026, and Chick-fil-A and Panera Bread are the planned anchors. NJ.com reported in September that Chick-fil-A will be a standalone drive-thru, that construction and tenant fit-out work were underway, and that neither company had announced an opening date. The same report noted a Chase Bank going in on the ACME parking lot across from Defeo Lane. NJ.com described this stretch as one that "once seemed defined by garden center greenhouses."

Put together, the corridor's changes are about convenience: groceries, discount clothing, a drive-thru, a bank branch and quick lunches, all within a short drive of the Bethel Road light. For people in Somers Point and nearby Linwood and Northfield, that means more errands can stay in town, and more traffic around New Road as each new building opens.

Maryland Avenue took over the summer nights

The bayside openings drew attention faster. In June, The Philadelphia Inquirer's summer restaurant roundup ran under the headline "For this summer's biggest Jersey Shore restaurant openings, head to the mainland," and two of its picks were in Somers Point.

Pablo is the bigger of the two. The Inquirer reported that the Zest Restaurant Group, which runs Port, Fish House and Tacos Caballito Tequileria in Cape May, spent $2 million renovating the former Mexiquila at 101 E. Maryland Ave. The result is a multi-room space with four bars and 400 seats. There's a lounge with a DJ, a greenhouse dining room with roll-up garage doors, and a patio bar set up like a beach. Co-owner Ross Hammer told the Inquirer that about 1,200 guests come through on a busy evening, that cocktails make up about 75% of sales, and that waits for a seat in the no-reservations dining room averaged two to three hours. NJ.com dated the opening to early May.

Webster's Tavern opened in early June at 18 MacArthur Blvd., in the former Windjammer. It's a sports bar run by owner Chris Webb, and the Inquirer counted 38 TVs, with Webb planning to add more. The paper reported that traffic reached 750 customers a day within a couple of weeks of opening. The beer list includes local pours from Slack Tide and Somers Point Brewing.

The smallest of the group is a block from Pablo. Crust & Co., a pizzeria at 12 E. Maryland Ave., is open, and in mid-October its ordering site listed hours from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Those late hours fit this corner. Its anchors are a nightspot, a sports bar and a pizza counter that stays open past midnight, all in a walkable cluster near the bay.

The one building that started from an empty lot

Bay Ave Brewery is the only project in this year's wave being built from scratch. It's going up on a previously vacant lot at 435 Bay Ave., on the corner of Bay and Maryland avenues. Cousins Brian Murphy and Tom Dooner, who started out as homebrewers, are behind it. NJ.com reported in August that the nearly 5,800-square-foot building will be split between a production brewery and a taproom, and that the owners were aiming for October, pending final construction, occupancy approvals and state licensing.

Its business plan relies on the neighbors. NJ.com noted that the site sits near several Bay Avenue restaurants the owners hope to work with, and Dooner told the outlet, "People will be able to order take out food and bring it into the brewery or get delivery to the door." In other words, the taproom plans to serve beer and let the nearby kitchens supply the food. The cousins have already brewed a collaboration beer, an English summer ale called Summer Pubber, with Gusto Brewing in West Cape May.

Because the brewery depends on those neighbors, its location matters more than most. A taproom at Bay and Maryland, a short walk from Pablo and Crust & Co., would give the bayside cluster one more evening stop, and one that sends business back to the restaurants around it.

What's still pending as of mid-October

Several projects in this wave are still in progress, and their opening dates will decide how different the city looks by the holidays:

1. Bay Ave Brewery, 435 Bay Ave. The October target depended on occupancy approval and state licensing as of the August report, so the opening announcement is the date to watch.
2. Dave's Hot Chicken and Jersey Mike's, Ocean Heights Plaza. As of Oct. 8, both were planned with no grand-opening dates.
3. Chick-fil-A and Panera Bread, Defeo Plaza, 331 New Road. Both were in construction and tenant fit-out as of September, with no dates from either company.
4. Chase Bank, ACME lot across from Defeo Lane. It's part of the same Route 9 build-out.

If you're planning around these, Ross and Aldi are open now. The Defeo Plaza drive-thru and the brewery's taproom are the two openings most likely to change the traffic and the evenings on their streets.

If you live near New Road or the Bay Avenue blocks and wonder how all this new activity affects your street, Pamela Stearns has followed the mainland shore through many rounds of change like this one. Call Pam for a free local market consultation, and she'll walk you through what's opening around your home and what it could mean when you decide to sell.