Walk from the pier up Manhattan Avenue and cut over to Highland, and you will pass at least half a dozen storefronts that were something else six months ago. A gelato counter where a beach club used to be. A jewelry shop where a flower mart used to sit. A coffee chain moving into a space that, for years, poured Peet's. None of this is rumor or a single closure worth a headline. It is a pattern, and once you count it, it changes how you read every "coming soon" sign on the block.
Kelly Stroman, executive director of the Downtown Manhattan Beach Business and Professionals Association, put a number on the feeling in a July 2026 conversation with MB News: the turnover happening right now, she said, is unprecedented, and everyone downtown is talking about it. That is not marketing language from a press release. It is the person whose job is to track every lease in the district telling a reporter that this year is different from the ordinary churn of a beach town retail strip.
What "Unprecedented" Looks Like When You Count It
The easiest way to see it is to lay the four main downtown strips side by side and look at what left versus what is filling the space.
| Strip | What's Leaving or Gone | What's Moving In |
|---|---|---|
| Metlox Plaza | Drift Beach Club (closed June), Lemonade (space now approved for buildout) | Bacio di Latte gelato (now open), Sogna Toscana (approved by the Planning Commission) |
| Manhattan Beach Blvd. | Peet's Coffee, Pitfire, Gelato & Angels, Pressed Juicery (closed, no tenant yet) | Blank Street Coffee, Great White, Velvet by Graham & Spencer |
| Manhattan Ave. | Rolling Hills Flower Mart, Kate Lester Home, Walstory (closing) | Ounce of Salt (jewelry by local designer Jen Baick), Framebridge (slated for fall) |
| Highland Ave. | Harry's Cleaners (closed, no tenant yet), Ocean View Cafe (closing) | Sand Spa and Polish by Sand Spa (already open), Alfred Coffee |
Four strips, more than a dozen changes, most of it landing within roughly six months. That density is what separates this year from the usual one-restaurant-closes, one-restaurant-opens rhythm of a small downtown.
Who's Leaving, Who's Arriving
Look closer at the list and a second pattern shows up underneath the first. Several of the names moving in are not single-location local shops. Blank Street Coffee and Alfred Coffee both operate multiple locations across Los Angeles. Beyond Yoga is a national athleisure brand. Velvet by Graham & Spencer is part of a larger apparel company. Even Great White, arriving in the former Pitfire space, comes with an existing footprint elsewhere.
That is not a knock on any of them, and it is not a clean story either. Pressed Juicery, itself a multi-location brand, is one of the names leaving, its space still empty as of this summer with what the business association describes as multiple groups interested. So this is not simply chains pushing out independents. It is closer to a broader reshuffling where backed, multi-location concepts are winning a larger share of the available space than they used to, whoever currently holds the lease.
The clearest single example is Gum Tree. The local boutique and café, known for its curated mix of home goods and gifts, lost its lease on Manhattan Beach Boulevard and is relocating to a smaller footprint nearby on Highland Avenue, with the move slated to close out by the end of July. Its former, larger space on the boulevard is where Beyond Yoga is expected to open. One long-running local shop stepping down in size, in the same season a national athleisure label steps into its old spot. That is the turnover Stroman was describing, condensed into a single storefront.
Not every change fits that mold. Ounce of Salt, a jewelry line from local designer Jen Baick, is opening in the former Rolling Hills Flower Mart space on Manhattan Avenue, which runs the pattern in reverse: a local name claiming space that a chain vacated. The honest read is that downtown is not becoming a mall. It is becoming a mix where a walk down any given block is less predictable than it was a year ago.
The One Thing That Hasn't Moved
Amid all of it, one fixture on the calendar has not budged. The Manhattan Beach Certified Farmers Market still runs every Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Civic Center Plaza, just off 15th Street between the police and fire building and City Hall. It is still organized by the same Downtown Manhattan Beach Business and Professional Association tracking all the lease changes elsewhere, and it is still the one weekly gathering point that has not been touched by a single closure or buildout this year. If you want a constant to measure the rest of the changes against, that is it.
The Calendar Already Locked In
The fall season gives residents a handful of fixed dates to actually go see the new storefronts in person, several of which carry their own small story.
- September 27: The 7th Annual Downtown Manhattan Beach Car Show returns from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. along Manhattan Beach Boulevard and Manhattan Avenue, benefiting the Manhattan Beach Police K-9 Foundation. It is worth noting this event was cancelled in 2024 and could not be reorganized in 2025, so this year marks its actual return, not just its seventh edition. Organizers have also capped it at 200 vehicles this year, down from 250 in past years, citing a smaller available footprint downtown, itself a small sign of how much the surrounding real estate has shifted.
- October 3 and 4: The Manhattan Beach Hometown Fair runs 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days, the city's long-running fair that funds scholarships and school programs through the rest of the year.
- October 24: The Family Halloween Carnival runs 1 to 5 p.m. at Manhattan Heights Park, the city's annual kid-focused event away from the downtown core.
- November 18: Pier Lighting runs 6 to 9 p.m. downtown and on the pier itself, the traditional kickoff to the holiday season that draws people back into the same blocks that have spent the year changing hands.
Line the calendar up against the tenant list and the fall season becomes a built-in excuse to see the turnover firsthand. The Car Show alone puts you on Manhattan Beach Boulevard and Manhattan Avenue, the two strips with the most tenant changes on the list above.
What This Actually Means for Anyone Watching the Block
None of this requires a real estate decision to matter. If you already live here, the practical takeaway is simpler: check before you go. A coffee run to the old Peet's spot will not get you what it used to. The juice bar that used to be a reliable stop on Manhattan Beach Boulevard is currently just an empty storefront. Gum Tree is still around, just smaller and around the corner on Highland. None of that is bad news. It is just enough change, compressed into enough months, that assuming your downtown looks the way it did in January is no longer a safe bet.
The mix downtown is leaning more toward names you might recognize from Santa Monica or Venice, and less toward the single-location, family-run shops that used to fill those same addresses. Whether that is a good trade depends entirely on what you valued about downtown in the first place. Either way, it is worth seeing with your own eyes before the next lease turns over.
If you are weighing what any of this means for your own address, or you are curious how a changing block affects what your home is actually worth right now, the team at Janet Chen Group tracks these shifts as closely as anyone downtown. Reach out for a personalized consultation and a free home valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
