Inside 117 Walnut Avenue there are folded potato chips, Wisconsin cheese curds, anchovy-lemon butter and pasta-water salt tablets. A cooler holds Pajaro Pastures eggs and Fogline Farm meats, and another holds Companion Bakery cookie dough and Marianne's Ice Cream. A shelf of thrifted Pyrex and Tupperware sits nearby. This is Tomato Tomato, a specialty pantry and neighborhood market run by owner-operator Lizi Barba. It celebrated its grand opening on October 23.
In its October 27 dining column, Good Times called the shop "a welcome resource for the district's fast-growing population." In 2026, people moved into the new apartments faster than businesses moved into the storefronts below them. A full grocery run now means a trip to the edge of downtown, so the small shops and the weekly market in between carry more of the everyday load than they did two years ago.
About 300 new apartments in one year
Two large buildings opened downtown in 2026. RiverRow, at 414 Front Street, opened in March with 175 apartments. The Coastal Watershed Council dated its ribbon-cutting to March 12.
Pacific Station North, at 900 Pacific Avenue, has 128 apartments. Residents started moving in during July. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported that more than 100 officials, residents and project partners came to its grand opening on September 29. The Sentinel also noted that the larger Pacific Station project between Pacific Avenue and Front Street has been in the works since 2001. Its first building, Pacific Station South at 818 Pacific Avenue, already had residents by June 2025.
Together, RiverRow and Pacific Station North added 303 apartments in about six months, within a few blocks of Front Street and lower Pacific. More are on the way. The City lists 124 homes and commercial space in the downtown library project on Cedar Street, between Lincoln and Cathcart, and that project is still under construction.
The storefronts underneath are filling slowly
Each of these buildings has commercial space on the ground floor. Leasing that space has been slow. RiverRow alone has nine retail spaces. In March, Lookout Santa Cruz reported that developers have struggled to find retail tenants for downtown's "thousands of square feet of new commercial space." Lookout pointed to ongoing construction around downtown and a hard few years for retail nationwide as possible reasons. The Anton Pacific Apartments, at Pacific Avenue and Laurel Street, had gone four years without a commercial tenant.
The first ground floors to fill have mostly gone to services. When Pacific Station South opened, the Downtown Association of Santa Cruz named Dientes Community Dental Care and Santa Cruz Community Health Center as its ground-floor occupants.
Food arrived in March, in a building that opened back in 2024. Luciana and Sandro Costanza, who also own Pizzeria La Bufala, opened Gran Gelato Caffè in the Cedar Street Family Apartments, at the corner of Cathcart and Cedar. The shop makes 12 gelato flavors in-house and also serves sfogliatelle, espresso, and salads and sandwiches at lunch. Sandro Costanza told Lookout that the building's owners helped make the opening possible:
"They built out the structure, all the plumbing and electrical for us. We did the floor and the finishes."
Lookout named the developer as Chris Garwood of Pacific Union Housing Group and Milestone Housing. That detail helps explain why some of the new ground floors still sit empty. A finished building can still leave a lot of build-out work before a food business can move in.
The big grocer moved to the edge
New residents are not the only change to downtown food shopping. The grocery store itself moved. New Leaf Community Markets closed its Pacific Avenue store in October 2024. It reopened on September 27, 2025, in a 29,000-square-foot store in Gateway Plaza at 650 River Street. According to Lookout's tour of the new store, it added a self-serve poke station, hot and salad bars, barbecue, a bakery, a juice and coffee counter, and seating for 30, along with bigger produce, meat and seafood departments.
The bigger store is a real gain. It also sits at the north end of downtown instead of in the middle of it. City officials had hoped another grocer would take the old space at 1134 Pacific. Anthropologie moved in instead, and Good Times reported its grand opening as January 21, 2026.
That leaves Trader Joe's on Front Street. When New Leaf's Pacific Avenue store closed in October 2024, Lookout called Trader Joe's downtown's only grocery store. So downtown's two full grocery stores now sit at its edges, one on Front Street and one on River Street. Most of the new apartments are in between.
What a week of downtown food shopping looks like now
For someone living near Pacific Avenue, the everyday food map now looks like this:
- Wednesday, 1 to 5 p.m. The Downtown Farmers' Market runs year-round at Church and Cedar streets, with produce, pastured meat and other food. It moved there from Cedar and Lincoln on June 4, 2025, to make room for the library construction. Santa Cruz Local reported at the time that it would stay at the interim site for at least two years.
- Every day but Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tomato Tomato at 117 Walnut Avenue covers pantry restocks, local eggs and meat, and dessert.
- For a full cart. Trader Joe's is on Front Street. New Leaf is at 650 River Street, and its hot bar and seating also make it a lunch stop.
- Coffee and a sandwich close to home. Gran Gelato Caffè is on Cedar Street, in a building that also has apartments.
All hours above come from recent news coverage and the market's event listing, and they can change. Check Tomato Tomato's Instagram, @tomatotomatosc, before a special trip.
Why a Walnut Avenue pantry fits this moment
Tomato Tomato fills a specific gap. A full grocery store needs a lot of floor space, and the old downtown grocery space at 1134 Pacific went to Anthropologie. A small market needs much less room, and it can stock what the big stores at either end of downtown carry less of. Barba picks the stock herself. Good Times lists anchovy-lemon butter, bespoke mustards and pasta-water salt tablets alongside staples from farms and bakeries in the region.
Its weekly schedule also fits around the farmers' market. Tomato Tomato is closed Tuesdays, the market runs Wednesday afternoons, and the shop is open the other six days for anyone who misses the market or runs out by the weekend.
The bigger picture is still changing. The library building on Cedar Street will add more commercial space when it's finished, and the Pacific Station site between Pacific Avenue and Front Street also has plans for a new Metro station. For now, a full week of downtown food shopping means Front Street, River Street, Cedar and Church on Wednesdays, and Walnut Avenue in between.
Most people who live downtown already know which shop has the eggs they like and which day the market runs. If you're thinking about how these changes affect your own block, whether you're staying put, moving within downtown or thinking about selling, I'm glad to talk it through over coffee at one of these new spots. Danny Ward grew up in Santa Cruz County and follows these openings closely. Let's Connect.
