Whatever happened to the seafood counter this town used to have?
If you've been driving Route 146 past the old H&R Block office next to CVS and noticed contractors coming and going, that question has an answer. Oyster & Fin, a fresh seafood market from Shannon Thompson, who moved to the area a few years back after growing up on Maryland's Eastern Shore, is set to open at 841 Route 146, Suite 3, this October. It's the first dedicated seafood shop the town center area has had since Moby Rick's Seafood closed its doors, and the timing matters more than it looks. Clifton Park's food and retail scene has spent the past year restocking itself, storefront by storefront, faster than the roads around it are being rebuilt to handle the traffic. That's the real story of this fall: what's landing on the shelves and menus is ahead of what's happening under the pavement.
The Space Everyone's Been Watching
Thompson is working with suppliers along the East Coast, several out of the Boston pier, to stock the market with fresh tuna, salmon, swordfish, and haddock, along with oysters, poke bowls, lobster rolls, and a 350-gallon tank of live lobster. It's a narrower focus than the fish counters tucked into the area's grocery stores, and that specificity is the point. For a town that lost its one dedicated seafood shop, a market built around nothing but the catch fills a gap that's sat open for a while. If the October target holds, it'll be one of the first genuinely new grocery categories to arrive in Clifton Park's town center in some time, rather than another version of something already on the shelf a mile away.
What Moved Into the Ninety-Nine, and What's Moving In Around It
The seafood market isn't opening into a quiet food scene. Clifton Park Center has spent the past year turning over storefronts at a pace that's hard to track unless you're driving past it every week.
The Grille by Jacob & Anthony's, the newest concept from the Marrello Restaurants family that's run Capital Region kitchens since Anthony Marrello opened an Italian counter in Albany in 1959, took over the fully renovated former Ninety-Nine Restaurant space at 306 Clifton Park Center Road, right next to Chick-fil-A. It joins the family's existing Saratoga Springs and Stuyvesant Plaza locations as a more upscale, steak-and-seafood sit-down option in a corridor that's mostly built for quick counter service.
Herbie's Burgers, the Capital Region-grown smash burger chain, opened its eighth location this spring at Clifton Park Center on Clifton Country Road, and it's the chain's largest store yet, with a full arcade and the biggest seating area the founder has built. Around it, the mall's retail mix has been filling in too. Five Below held its grand opening weekend in February at 22 Clifton Country Road, Suite 8. J.Crew Factory and Wetzel's Pretzels are part of the same push to bring in new tenants under the property's current ownership. There's also an Asian fusion restaurant in the works whose name hasn't been made public yet, which tells you the mall's turnover is still in motion, not finished.
Taken together, it's a lot of new signage for one shopping center in under a year.
A Decade-Old Restaurant Closed. Its Replacement Signed a Lease Within Months.
The turnover isn't confined to the mall itself. A few miles away at Village Plaza, Blaze Pizza closed earlier this year after a decade in business, leaving the region with just one remaining location at Stuyvesant Plaza. Within months, Shake Shack signed a lease for that same spot with an affiliate of Windsor Development, the property's landlord, with an opening targeted for 2027. No specific date has been announced yet, so residents hoping for a Shack Burger by next summer should hold that thought loosely. But the speed of the turnaround, a decade-old chain closing and a national one already under lease for the same address within the year, says something about how fast retail demand is moving here right now.
Three Roundabouts, One Corridor, Not One Shovel Yet
Here's where the pace changes. The intersection of Sitterly Road and Clifton Park Center Road, the one every one of these new businesses sits near or funnels traffic through, is scheduled for a rebuild that eliminates the stoplight entirely in favor of a single-lane roundabout, along with new sidewalks and pedestrian crossings along Sitterly Road. The town secured a $3,450,356 grant from the New York State Department of Transportation for the work, and federal authorization to proceed with the project phase came through in July 2025.
That sounds like progress until you check where the project actually stands. According to the town's approved 2026 budget, the Sitterly Road and Clifton Park Center Road roundabout is still listed among the projects "currently in stages of planning," alongside two other roundabouts the town has queued for Route 146 at Tanner Road and at Waite Road. Three separate roundabout projects on the same corridor, all still in planning, none with a construction start date attached.
So if you've been avoiding the mall entrance because of backups at that light, don't expect relief this fall alongside the new restaurants. The businesses are opening on a much faster clock than the road project sitting under them. Anyone factoring drive time into weeknight dinner plans should plan around the current stoplight for at least another season, maybe longer.
What Fall Actually Looks Like Once You Leave the Retail Loop
Not everything new in Clifton Park this season involves a storefront. The town is opening its annual Vischer Ferry Nature and Historic Preserve photo contest for entries starting September 1 through December 28, with Junior, Amateur, and Professional divisions built around this year's winter theme. The 600-acre preserve runs along the Mohawk River through the Vischer Ferry Historic District, and its trails still pass the remains of the old Erie Canal alongside the wetlands, which is part of why it photographs so differently once the leaves are down. Entries go to the town by email, and voting happens in two rounds, one online in early January and a final round during Winterfest.
Closer to the calendar's start, Clifton Park Farm Fest runs in mid-September as one of the town's signature fall weekends, with visitors driving between local farms for hayrides and demonstrations. It's a smaller, more local counterpart to the retail expansion happening a few miles away, and it's a reminder that Clifton Park's fall isn't only measured in new lease signings.
The Two Speeds of the Same Town
None of this is really about any single restaurant or store. It's about the gap between how fast a shopping center can turn over its tenants and how long it takes a town to rebuild the intersection underneath them. Clifton Park's food and retail scene has moved through an entire cycle this year: closures, renovations, grand openings, a decade-old chain replaced within months. The infrastructure meant to carry all that new traffic is still working through federal authorizations and preliminary design phases, one grant at a time. Both things are true at once, and knowing that difference is the only way to actually plan a weekend around either one.
If you're weighing a move to Clifton Park or just keeping an eye on how the town is changing block by block, Julie Gold Homes spends as much time tracking intersections and lease signings as closing prices. Reach out anytime for a look at what's actually happening on the ground here, no obligation attached.
