Nine Years Vacant, Four Openings in One Year: What's Actually Filling In on Cicero's Route 11

For nine years, the old Buffalo Wild Wings off Route 11 sat dark. Anyone who drives the Marketplace shopping center near Price Chopper and Lowe's knows the building. It closed in 2017 and stayed that way through nearly a decade of Cicero life, long enough that most people stopped expecting anything to change.

Something did. And it did not stop at one storefront. Within the same twelve months, four separate businesses have signed leases, poured concrete, or opened doors across two different stretches of town, turning a corridor known mostly for what used to be there into one worth watching for what is showing up next.

The Corridor Fills In

The pattern is not one lucky tenant filling one lucky vacancy. It is four unrelated deals landing in the same rough window, on the same two roads, within about a mile of each other. That kind of clustering does not happen by accident in a market like this. It happens when landlords who have carried empty square footage for years finally get traction at the same time, and when regional chains doing their first Central New York expansions all decide 2026 is the year.

The Corner That Sat Empty Nine Years

The first domino was Royal Stir-Fry & Sushi Buffet, an all-you-can-eat Mongolian stir-fry and sushi concept that opened this past February inside the old Buffalo Wild Wings. The restaurant group behind it also runs Aloha Krab at Destiny USA, and partner Tao Wang told a local news crew the location sold itself on proximity to Route 11 alone. Crews had been rebuilding the interior since the previous spring, which means the corner spent close to a year under construction before a single customer walked in. It is open now, roughly seven months in, which makes it the one entry on this list that residents have already had time to try.

The Slow Neighbor

Next door, the former OfficeMax and Office Depot is becoming a Burlington. Garfunkel Development, which manages the Marketplace shopping center, told WSYR it had been talking with Burlington about the space for more than a year before the deal closed. The original estimate put an opening sometime between May and August of this year. That window came and went. A July 24 update pushed the timeline to mid-to-late September, with crews still paving the parking lot and a hiring sign still up on the building as of that report. If Burlington is telling the truth about September, the two former Marketplace anchors that sat empty since 2017 will both be open and trading within the same calendar year, nine years after the first one went dark.

The Second Domino

A Wingstop is also coming to the Route 11 strip mall, in the space next to Tropical Smoothie and T-Mobile. The chain's first Central New York location opened in Camillus on April 20, in the old GameStop on West Genesee Street, and the company told WSYR at the time that Cicero would follow shortly after. No firm date has surfaced since. Four months past the Camillus opening with no announced date is a long "soon," and it is worth watching whether the Cicero build-out is moving at Burlington speed rather than the original timeline suggested.

A Different Zip Code, Same Push

The fourth piece of this sits on Route 31, not Route 11, which is part of why it is easy to miss if you only watch the Marketplace. Holland Farms Bakery & Deli, the Utica-area bakery known for half-moon cookies, donuts, jelly buns, and its Tomato Pie, signed a lease in the former Metabolic Fitness space off Route 31 near I-81 and Pardee Road. Owner Heather Potrzeba told WSYR in May that a realtor had reached out about the Cicero location specifically because of traffic volume on that stretch of road, and that the goal was a renovated building and an August opening. Holland Farms had already tested the Onondaga County market with a Manlius location in the old Café Kubal space the previous summer, so Cicero is not a first swing, it is a second one that worked well enough to repeat. Whether the August target held is not yet confirmed publicly, but the lease and the renovation plan are real.

Four deals. Two roads. One year. That is not the normal drip of a single vacancy getting leased. It is a corridor that spent most of a decade being defined by what left it, now getting defined by what is arriving instead.

The Season Turns at Oneida Shores

While Route 11 fills in, the lake side of town is closing out its calendar on schedule. The swimming beach at Oneida Shores County Park on Lakeshore Road runs from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend, and this year that means the guarded beach, bathhouse, and splash pad wind down right around September 7. The boat launch itself does not close, and the four launching bays that make Oneida Shores a favorite for smaller motorized boats and car-top kayaks stay in play well past summer, but the lifeguards and the crowd that comes with them are on their way out.

That closing weekend lands on the same date as the town's next big gathering, which is not a coincidence of the calendar so much as a hand-off. Labor Day marks the end of one version of Cicero's outdoor season and the start of another.

What Fills the Calendar Once the Beach Closes

The Cicero-Plank Road Chamber of Commerce keeps the fullest running list of what comes next, and the fall lineup this year runs through Red Bridge Park on a near-weekly basis:

• Monday, September 7: Red Bridge Park Car Show & Craft Fair, the same weekend the Oneida Shores beach season officially ends.
• Sunday, September 20: a spaghetti fundraiser for Cicero Police, Fire, and Public Safety, paired with a Jeep cruise-in and concert, also at Red Bridge Park.
• Friday, October 23: the Cicero Haunted Trail, back again at Red Bridge Park.

That is on top of the Cicero Farmers Market that runs through the season and the town's earlier CiceroFest fundraiser for the Chamber, held in June at the Spinning Wheel Restaurant. None of this is new territory for anyone who has lived here more than a season or two. What is worth noticing is the density of it against the retail changes happening at the same time. A resident who drives Route 11 to get to Red Bridge Park in September is going to pass a Royal Stir-Fry that is open, a Burlington that might finally be open, and a Wingstop that could go either way, all within the same few minutes of driving that used to pass mostly empty storefronts.

Why This Particular Fall Feels Different

Cicero has never lacked for things to do. Oneida Shores, Red Bridge Park, and the Marketplace corridor have anchored daily life here for years. What changed in 2026 is the timing. A shopping center that spent nine years being known for what closed is now the site of the town's most concentrated run of new openings in recent memory, landing in the same months as the traditional turn from beach season into the fall event calendar. Whether that pace holds through the fall, particularly on Burlington's pushed-back date and Wingstop's still-unannounced one, is the kind of detail only someone watching the corridor closely would catch.

That is the kind of local detail Denise Van Patten tracks for clients who already call Cicero home, whether they are weighing a move within town or just want to know what is changing around them. If you are curious what a corridor like this means for your own property or your next move, CNY Real Estate Connection is a good place to start that conversation.