Order lunch at 221 East Myrtle Street this month and a twenty-year-old named Ethan Sorensen will hand you a BLT or a Reuben across the counter. Two years ago, the same address served Maine lobster rolls and garlic-steamed clams under a Key West flag. Same building, same block of downtown, same bar next door. Two different owners looked at that exact spot and made two very different bets about what this stretch of Stillwater actually wants from a restaurant. Only one bet is still standing, and the difference between them says more about downtown's rhythm this year than any single opening or summer event could on its own.
The Corner That Keeps Changing Its Mind
In October 2024, Tony Misenor and Jessica Junker brought D.J.'s Clam Shack to Myrtle Street, a Key West import known for its lobster rolls and conch fritters, set up right next to No-Neck Tony's, the bar Misenor and Junker already owned. The idea was straightforward: order seafood at the counter, then carry it next door for a drink.
By March 2026, that space had already changed hands. Sorensen, a first-time restaurant owner from White Bear Lake, took over the lease and gutted the concept. Gone was the full seafood menu and the dine-in seating built for lingering. In its place: a roughly 1,500-square-foot counter operation with seating for 25, built around speed rather than atmosphere.
Sorensen was direct about who he was building for.
"It just feels like there's the right kind of market crowd for that type of sandwich concept here."
He wasn't describing tourists looking for a sit-down seafood dinner. He was describing people walking toward the St. Croix with lunch already in hand, headed for a picnic rather than a table. The one constant across both versions of that address is the bar next door. E's Gourmet Sandwiches now stocks some of No-Neck Tony's own products on its shelves, the same proximity the clam shack leaned on, just used differently. Whatever comes and goes at 221 Myrtle, the bar keeps drawing the foot traffic that decides which bet wins.
Here's the shift in plain terms:
| At 221 Myrtle Street | Fall 2024 | Summer 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Concept | D.J.'s Clam Shack, a Key West import | E's Gourmet Sandwiches, local counter service |
| Signature items | Lobster rolls, conch fritters, garlic-steamed clams | BLT, club, Reuben/Rachel, garlic cilantro fries |
| Model | Dine-in seafood counter, drinks carried next door | Takeout-forward, 25 seats, built for picnic traffic |
| Hours | Full-service seafood counter | 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily |
Two operators, same address, one clear direction: downtown's most reliable customer isn't the day-tripper booking a seafood dinner. It's the person already walking somewhere else who needs something fast on the way.
The Last Tuesday Of The Season
That same instinct, build it for the person who's already here, shows up in how downtown spends its free evenings. Since July 7, Summer Tuesdays has taken over North Lowell Park every week: a vendor market at 5 p.m., live music from 6 to 8, and a movie screened about ten minutes after sunset. No admission. Tomorrow night, August 11, closes out the season.
The finale lineup:
- Music: Lars Carlson & the Secondhand Hipsters
- Activity: Kari's Create & Paint
- Movie: How to Train Your Dragon
It's a modest bill compared to earlier weeks, which brought acts like Sawyer's Dream and a giant-bubbles night paired with Hoppers on the big screen. But the format never changed all summer, and that consistency is the point. A free weeknight series with no ticket booth and no headline act isn't designed to pull in weekend tourism dollars. It's built for someone who already has a reason to be in Stillwater on a Tuesday and doesn't need convincing to stay.
Where Locals Are Already Voting With Their Feet
The same logic runs through two other additions to downtown this year. The Stillwater Farmers Market still sets up Saturday mornings at 3rd and Pine, in the Riverview lot across from the Historic Courthouse, with new vendors joining the rotation this season.
And this year, two local moms turned their own frustration into a business. Kristi Larson and Jenna Johnson had spent years taking food tours in cities like Savannah and Charleston and kept wondering why Stillwater didn't have one. This summer they launched the Stillwater Food Tour, featuring five stops they picked to represent the range of what downtown offers.
The selection criteria mattered as much as the concept.
"We're really focusing on locally owned spots."
That's the same instinct that pulled a national seafood chain out of 221 Myrtle Street and put a local sandwich shop in its place. When a new business built specifically to showcase downtown Stillwater to visitors deliberately screens out chains, it's telling you what the market actually values right now: ownership with a name attached to it, not a franchise with a familiar logo.
The Bike Loop Everyone Ends Up Recommending
Downtown's pull isn't only culinary. Brown's Creek Trail runs west out of downtown Stillwater toward Duluth Junction, where it connects to the Gateway Trail for riders who want to keep going. The route locals tend to recommend is starting in Stillwater and riding out first, because the return leg is a gradual, mostly downhill glide straight back into town, arriving right where the restaurants are.
This past weekend added another data point to that pattern. The Bridge the Valley Bike Rally set up a dedicated Kid Zone at South Lowell Park on Saturday, August 9, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., organized cycling programming that didn't exist in this form a few years ago. Riders finishing a Brown's Creek loop hungry and headed for a quick bite downtown are, again, exactly the customer Sorensen built his sandwich shop around. The trail and the storefront turnover on Myrtle Street aren't separate stories. They're the same story, told from two different directions.
What's Already On The Fall Calendar
Downtown doesn't stop once Summer Tuesdays wraps. The Stillwater Rivertown Art Festival returns October 4, with Sunday themed as "Artoberfest," complete with a polka band and Oktoberfest food and beverages. Admission is free, and so is the shuttle: a red trolley runs visitors from the Harbor Freight parking lot on Washington Avenue straight to the festival center.
Even an event built to pull in out-of-town art buyers now comes with free parking-and-ride logistics designed to make it painless for someone who lives ten minutes away to just show up, park once, and skip fighting for a spot on Main Street. That's not a tourism feature. It's a residents' convenience, bundled into an event that could have skipped it entirely.
The Pattern, Not The Headlines
None of this is a single big story on its own. A sandwich shop replacing a clam shack. A free concert series ending on schedule. A bike rally that lasted six hours. A trolley shuttle at an art fair. But laid next to each other, the direction is consistent: downtown Stillwater's newest additions are increasingly built around the person who already lives here and is back again on a Tuesday night, a Saturday morning ride, or a random Wednesday lunch, not just the visitor passing through for a weekend on the river.
If you're already calling Stillwater home and curious what that kind of steady, locally anchored demand means for your own property, or if you're watching this stretch of the St. Croix Valley from outside and picturing yourself in it, MN Living Real Estate knows this market from the ground up. Let's Connect.
