Plaza del Mar Is Becoming Manalapan's Town Square
October 15, 2026
October 15, 2026
Since May, three developments have moved more of Manalapan's public life to the corner of East Ocean Avenue and A1A. In May, John G's, the plaza's best-known tenant, was sold, and in August the new owners announced plans to franchise it across South Florida. In June, a circuit judge approved the town's eminent-domain taking of the old bank building at Plaza del Mar for a future Town Hall. In September, commissioners rented that building to the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa as the base for its renovation.
Taken together, these turn the plaza from the place where Manalapan buys groceries into the place where the town will govern, where its largest neighbor is staging a renovation, and where a local breakfast name is starting to expand. Each piece started at a different meeting or in a different deal. They all land on the same few addresses.
The building in question sits at 131 S. Ocean Blvd. It started out as a gas station, became a bank and was later converted to office space. In September 2025, when the town first looked into buying it, an eminent-domain attorney at the commission meeting called the vacant site an unusual opportunity. An initial assessment put its value at around $1.3 million.
Here is how the town got from that meeting to ownership, as The Coastal Star and later town reporting tell it:
The reason for choosing this site was practical. Building at Plaza del Mar lets the current Town Hall keep running while construction is underway. Officials have also looked at acquiring more of the land around the plaza.
The current Town Hall at 600 S. Ocean Blvd. was built in 1981. In 2025 it was described as about 5,300 square feet, with ongoing drainage and air-conditioning problems and not enough room for the required fourth firefighter on a shift. The town's FY2026/27 budget lists the existing building at about 6,600 square feet. The two figures don't match, but either way the planned replacement is much larger. The budget describes a facility of roughly 12,000 square feet for the Town Commission, administration and police.
The money in the five-year capital plan shows how big the project is. It lists $175,000 in FY2026/27, $12 million in FY2027/28 and $10 million in FY2028/29 for "New City Hall (Design & Construction)," a total of $22.175 million. The plan doesn't commit to a start or completion date.
The fire station plan has also changed recently. A July 2026 report described Fire Rescue as part of the new complex and cited a possible $8 million county contribution toward a fire station there, within a project then estimated at $20 million. By September, Town Manager Eric Marmer was telling commissioners that Palm Beach County Fire Rescue would rather stay at the current Town Hall site and pay to build its own facility there.
If that plan holds, town offices and police would move to the plaza corner at 131 S. Ocean Blvd. The fire station would stay at 600 S. Ocean Blvd., about half a mile south on the same road by address. The July financing assumptions came before that change, so they may no longer apply.
The town isn't leaving the building empty while it plans. On September 8, commissioners approved a lease of the former bank building to MPB Property LLC, the Eau's owner, as a construction site office. The rent is $4,600 a month, and the resort takes the building as it is. The lease began September 11, 2026, runs one year to September 11, 2027, and then renews month to month unless either side ends it.
The town also approved a storage area for the resort's contractor next to the building. It sits behind an eight-foot chain-link fence with a windscreen and a rolling gate, so the corner of the plaza now looks like a job site.
The approved work is on the guestroom balconies of the Eau at 100 S. Ocean Blvd. It adds new black aluminum railings and vertical teak-colored, wood-look cladding on the balcony side walls and ceilings. The work runs in three phases per tower, and no landscaping is affected. General manager Tim Nardi told commissioners the new railings drop the current palm tree design. "We're very excited about the renovation that's about to start at the hotel," he said.
From A1A, the change will be the end of the palm-motif railings across the resort's front, one phase at a time. Neither the town filings nor the local coverage say whether the resort stays open during the work. They also say nothing about the restaurants, the spa or traffic on A1A, and no finish date has been published.
John G's has a longer history than the plaza building it sits in. The restaurant opened in 1973 in the casino building in Lake Worth Beach, where weekend lines wrapped around the building. It moved to Plaza del Mar in 2011. In 2019 the founding Giragos family sold it to a Boca Raton couple, who changed very little; the biggest change was starting to accept credit cards.
In May 2026 it was sold again, to a Canadian businessman whose name hasn't been published. The new owners are franchising the brand. General manager Napoleon Barone gave The Coastal Star the plan:
"We're planning to come south from Port St. Lucie."
He named Jupiter, West Palm Beach and Boca as next stops, and possibly Miami.
The target is at least nine South Florida locations in five years. There are no plans for now to franchise outside Florida.
The first new location has already been pushed back once. In August it was projected to open in early September. By September 22, TCPalm reported a November 2026 opening on U.S. 1 in Port St. Lucie, though the owner still hadn't given an exact address. November is the stated plan, not a confirmed date.
No changes have been reported at the Manalapan location since the sale. The restaurant's own site lists 264 S. Ocean Blvd., open daily from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Breakfast runs until 11:15 a.m. Monday through Saturday and until 11:45 a.m. on Sunday. Lunch starts at 11:30 a.m., or noon on Sunday. The site still calls the cinnamon-nut French toast a best seller and says fish and chips has been on the menu since 1973. Those pages went up before the May sale, so they show what the restaurant has published, not confirmation of how things work under the new owner.
The franchise plan means the plaza is now the original location of a growing regional brand. Within a few years, a John G's in Jupiter or Boca may point back to a storefront that sits a short walk from the future Town Hall.
The new civic building will join a grocery-anchored center the town describes as "upscale," at the southwest corner of East Ocean Avenue and South Ocean Boulevard. The center is privately owned by Manalapan Plaza Del Mar LLC and managed by Garden Commercial. Here's the current lineup by address, from the Town of Manalapan's Plaza del Mar directory:
Truist is still at 280 S. Ocean Blvd., a different building from the condemned former bank at 131 S. Ocean Blvd. The landlord's undated leasing page lists Fred Astaire Dance Studio as coming soon. The same page lists a 1,753-square-foot space becoming available in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Plaza del Mar now has a court-approved Town Hall site and a fenced contractor yard on that site through at least September 2027. It also has a 53-year-old breakfast name expanding north to Port St. Lucie, and the original storefront still opens at 8 a.m. every day.
If you own a residence along this stretch of A1A and want to talk through how a civic building on the plaza corner and a refreshed Eau across the road fit into your plans, Sharon Sweet can walk you through it over coffee near the corner. Schedule a private consultation.
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