On June 26, 2026, Weis Markets opened its second store inside Millsboro town limits. That's not a typo about the town, it's a fact about the chain. The original location sits off Route 24 near Long Neck. The new one sits along the Route 113 corridor at Peninsula Crossing Shopping Center. The distance between them is about nine miles, and Delaware Business Times reported that summer traffic can stretch that drive to 20 minutes or more even though it's the same grocery chain, the same town council, and the same mailing address.
A company doesn't build a second grocery store nine miles from its first one unless its own sales data already told it the town had split into two places that don't shop at the same location. That split says more about how Millsboro actually runs right now than any single ribbon cutting does, and once you see it, you start noticing it everywhere else in town too.
The Route 113 Side Is Building for Cars
The new store is Weis's fifth location in Delaware overall. Store Manager Stephen Rayburn oversees 185 full and part-time associates there, and the grand opening came with donations to the Food Bank of Delaware, the Brandywine Valley SPCA, Millsboro Fire Co., and East Millsboro Elementary School. That's a real payroll and a real community footprint, and it landed on a corridor built around parking lots, not sidewalks.
A mile away, the same corridor is about to get louder. Southern Delaware Brewing Company, the brewing arm of SoDel Concepts, is in advanced discussions to anchor a new project called the Mill Retail Center, going in on the former VFW site along Route 113. Delaware Business Times reported that the project is being built by local developers Jim and Mary Beth Parker of Jim Parker Builders, with plans for a 17,000-square-foot commercial and retail facility that includes outdoor gaming space and a roughly 6,000-square-foot restaurant. The interior buildout alone runs about $1 million.
If the deal closes, it would be SoDel's second Millsboro address and the brewing company's third location statewide, which happens to be the legal ceiling. Delaware caps a single brewery brand at three locations, and Southern Delaware Brewing already operates Thompson Island Brewing Company in Rehoboth Beach and Ocean View Brewing Company. Millsboro would be the last stop the law allows.
Both projects sit along the same highway, and both are built around the assumption that you're driving to them.
Main Street Is Building for Walking
Downtown looks nothing like that, and part of the reason is a road project that has nothing to do with restaurants. Millsboro's growth quietly earned it a bypass that rerouted Route 24 truck traffic around the historic downtown corridor. Business View Magazine's profile of the town puts the project at roughly $100 million, and Town Manager Jamie Burk credits it with diverting truck and through traffic that isn't destined for downtown, relieving congestion in that corridor.
That quieter Main Street is where the town's newer dining scene has actually taken root. Kaisy's Delights opened in a repurposed downtown bank building in early 2024, according to a spotlight piece hosted on the town's own website. The Greater Millsboro Chamber of Commerce made a similar bet, relocating its office into the downtown core on Main Street specifically for the visibility. Neither of those decisions makes sense on a highway built for drive-through traffic. They make sense on a street where people are already parked and walking.
Here's the split laid out side by side:
| Downtown Main Street | Route 113 Corridor | |
|---|---|---|
| Recent addition | Kaisy's Delights in a former bank building | Second Weis Markets, 185 associates |
| Coming next | Chamber office relocation for foot traffic | Southern Delaware Brewing at the Mill Retail Center |
| Built around | Walking, after the Route 24 bypass reduced truck traffic | Driving, parking lots, highway visibility |
| Anchor landmark | Cupola Park, on the tidal Indian River | Peninsula Crossing Shopping Center |
The Infrastructure Bill for Growing in Two Directions
None of this is happening in a town that's standing still elsewhere either. Burk told Business View Magazine that Millsboro is adding population at 10 to 15 percent a year, with the town's headcount near 8,600 and climbing. Growth at that pace doesn't just fill storefronts, it strains pipes.
In a 2025 construction permit application to Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, the town described a new wastewater treatment plant planned for White Farm on Hardscrabble Road, with an initial Phase 1 capacity of 1.7 million gallons a day built to expand to 3 million gallons a day in a later phase. A related permit application for the plant's force main shows the system is meant to serve growth well beyond downtown or the highway strip, including the Plantation Lakes development and Woodlands of Millsboro on the town's edges.
Burk also pointed to a new police station as part of the same growth story, and he was specific about how it's being paid for. Development revenue, including transfer taxes and impact fees collected every time a property changes hands or a new home gets a building permit, is funding those upgrades without a corresponding jump in the municipal property tax rate. Growing in two directions at once turns out to be expensive, and the town is betting the growth itself covers the bill.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
If your daily errands run through the Long Neck side of Route 24, your new grocery run just got nine miles longer than it used to be, or nine miles shorter, depending on which Weis was ever your habit. If you're closer to Plantation Lakes or the newer development off Route 113, you now have a full-size grocery store with a pharmacy and a Starbucks counter that didn't exist before June, plus a brewery on the way that will be the last one Delaware law allows anyone to open.
If your week already centers on Main Street, on Cupola Park, on the antique shops and the restaurants tucked into buildings that used to be a bank and a VFW hall, the bypass did you a favor you may not have thought to credit a highway project for. The truck traffic that used to run through downtown now runs around it, and the storefronts filling in behind that quiet are leaning into foot traffic on purpose.
Millsboro isn't becoming one bigger version of itself. It's becoming two different versions that happen to share a town seal, a police department, and soon, a wastewater treatment plant. Which version you experience most depends less on how long you've lived here and more on which side of Route 113 your house sits.
That kind of split is exactly the sort of thing that's easy to feel and hard to name until someone lays the pieces next to each other. If you're weighing what it means for your own address, or you're just curious how a shift like this tends to show up in what a home is worth on either side of that line, The Delashore Team knows this stretch of Sussex County closely enough to walk through it with you. Request a Free Home Valuation whenever you're ready to see where your own corner of Millsboro stands.
