Step onto the boardwalk at Suffolk Avenue this month and the boards feel solid underfoot, no give, no rattle when someone rides past on a bike. Keep going toward Cambridge Avenue and the fishing pier and the decking stays tight the whole way. Cross past the pier, though, and the boards start to bounce again, the old give-and-creak that longtime walkers have learned to expect. Most coverage of Ventnor's boardwalk project this year has been about the ribbon-cutting. What gets left out is where the new boards actually stop, and why the answer matters more than the celebration does if you're the one walking this stretch every day.
The New Boards End at Suffolk Avenue
Ventnor's boardwalk hadn't seen a full rebuild since crews repaired it after the March storm of 1962, the one longtime residents still call the storm when the ocean met the bay. The current project, funded largely through the New Jersey Boardwalk Preservation Fund that Governor Phil Murphy's administration set up with $100 million in federal American Rescue Plan money, covers the stretch from Jackson Avenue to Cambridge Avenue. That's the full scope on paper. In practice, the city split it into two phases, and only the first one is finished.
Phase one ran from Suffolk Avenue to Cambridge Avenue. Crews closed that section in November 2025, tore out the old pilings, and rebuilt the structure with Cumaru decking, a dense tropical hardwood chosen for how long it holds up against salt air. The city held a ribbon-cutting at Suffolk Avenue on April 29, 2026, ahead of Memorial Day weekend. Accounts of the total cost vary, with figures reported as high as $12 million and as low as $10.9 million, but every account agrees on the same $7.1 million state grant, with Ventnor covering the rest, somewhere in the range of $3.8 to $4 million, through municipal bonding.
Phase two, the section running from Suffolk Avenue back up to Jackson Avenue, hasn't started yet. It's scheduled to begin this fall, after Labor Day weekend closes out the season. Walk the other direction from Suffolk, toward Jackson, and you're already on that section, the boards there no different than they were last summer. So right now, in the last full week of August, you're walking on two different boardwalks depending on which side of Suffolk Avenue you're standing on. One was rebuilt from the ground up eight months ago. The other is still the boards that have been patched and re-patched for years, and construction fencing goes up on it within weeks.
Mayor Tim Kriebel, at the April ribbon-cutting, put it simply: "It's a place where we try to end our day."
Past Cambridge, the Plan Runs Out Entirely
Here's the part that doesn't make it into the celebratory coverage. The funded project only ever covered Jackson Avenue to Cambridge Avenue. South of Cambridge, toward the Margate line, was never part of the scope to begin with. One longtime boardwalk walker put it plainly in a comment on a local Ventnor news site, flagging "the utter deterioration of the south half" running from Cambridge down past Martindale Avenue, and questioning why routine maintenance on that stretch has lagged.
That means once phase two wraps this winter, Ventnor will have a boardwalk in three distinct conditions rather than two: a rebuilt middle section, a queued northern section, and a southern stretch beyond Cambridge that isn't scheduled for anything. If you walk the dog toward Margate in the evenings, or bike that direction because it's quieter, that's worth knowing before you plan around a "finished" boardwalk that, structurally, only ever meant the middle third.
| Boardwalk segment | Status as of August 2026 | What's there |
|---|---|---|
| Suffolk Ave to Cambridge Ave | Rebuilt, reopened April 29, 2026 | New Cumaru decking, pavilions, railings, fishing pier access |
| Suffolk Ave to Jackson Ave | Old boards, construction starts after Labor Day | Scheduled for fall/winter 2026 rebuild |
| South of Cambridge Ave toward Margate | Not part of the funded project | No rebuild currently planned |
The Market Turns Ten While the Fence Goes Back Up
Friday mornings at the St. James lot, corner of Atlantic and Newport, have run on the same rhythm for a decade now, and this year is the market's 10th season. More than 80 vendors set up between 8:30 a.m. and noon, a mix of Jersey produce stands, bakers, and the kind of specialty tables that don't show up at a regular grocery run. Market manager Maria Gatta has been involved since the market's first season, and this year's lineup added four new full-time vendors and ten part-time ones. Len Ariff coordinates the live music that plays through the morning, and if you've spent enough Fridays there, you already know about the Old Coots, a standing table of local retirees who hand out unsolicited advice with a straight face and the running line that it may not be the best advice, but it's free.
The market runs through Friday, September 4, which means there are two Fridays left this season as of this week. That closing date lands right around Labor Day weekend, the same stretch of calendar when Phase 2 construction is set to begin on the boardwalk's Suffolk-to-Jackson section. The market's last morning of the year and the start of the next construction fence sit close enough together that they make a reasonable marker for when Ventnor's summer actually ends and the town's off-season work begins.
The Restaurants Opening While the Boards Get Fixed
Construction fencing hasn't slowed down what's happening on Ventnor Avenue this summer. Culina Mundi, an upscale-casual spot at 5217 Ventnor Avenue, is opening later this summer with a menu drawing from Mediterranean, Asian, Latin, and European cooking, backed by a chef with more than 25 years in hospitality that includes time with Buddakan and The Continental under Starr Restaurants, plus dining program work at the Golden Nugget and Hard Rock Atlantic City. A few blocks down, Poppy's Bagels and More is opening its second location at 5123 Ventnor Avenue, taking over the old Jules of Margate space. The original Poppy's in Galloway built a following on flavors like jalapeño cheddar and whiskey maple cream cheese, and the Ventnor location will be the first time that menu is available on the island.
Drift Seafood, a boutique BYOB that opened its doors in Ventnor City with a menu built around land and sea dishes from Chef Gustavo, has also settled into the local rotation. Not everything has stuck, though. Kismet Bagels announced it would not reopen its Ventnor location for the 2026 season, a reminder that turnover here runs in both directions even in a summer with this much new construction. If you've been keeping a mental list of what's open on Ventnor Avenue right now, it's worth updating before Labor Day, because the list has moved more than usual this year.
The Wednesday Nights at Ski Beach
Ventnor's summer concert series has won the Press of Atlantic City's Best of the Press gold medal for concert venue three years running, in 2023, 2024, and 2025. The season kicked off Memorial Day weekend with the Party Wave Band at Ski Beach, the lawn at Dorset and Burk Avenues in Ventnor Heights, and the Wednesday-night Sunset at Ski Beach series carried through the summer from there, including a July 8 show from Don't Call Me Francis running through decades of classics. Vendors and sound check typically start around 5:30 p.m., with music beginning at 6:30, giving families enough time to grab a spot on the lawn before the crowd fills in.
What This Adds Up To
Ventnor isn't waiting for the boardwalk project to finish before it keeps living the way it always has. The market runs its final two Fridays of the season on schedule. New restaurants keep opening on Ventnor Avenue whether or not the fence is up two blocks away. Wednesday nights at Ski Beach haven't skipped a week. What's actually changed, if you look closely, is which stretch of boards you're standing on and what that tells you about what's coming next. The middle of the boardwalk got its rebuild. The northern stretch gets its turn after Labor Day. The southern stretch toward Margate isn't on anyone's list yet, and it's worth knowing that before you assume the whole boardwalk is finished just because the ribbon-cutting already happened.
If you're weighing what any of this means for a home here, whether you're thinking about a property near the rebuilt stretch, the section still waiting its turn, or the older boards near the Margate line, Christopher Oliva & Co has spent decades tracking exactly this kind of block-by-block detail across Ventnor and the rest of Absecon Island. Let's Connect if you want a local read on what these changes actually mean for a specific address.
