Manoa Marketplace Events in Fall 2026: Your Local Guide
October 8, 2026
October 8, 2026
Manoa doesn't have a town hall. It has a courtyard between a Longs Drugs and a bakery counter. Since the March storms, the open space at Manoa Marketplace has hosted the valley's disaster preparedness fair, a farmers market three days a week, and this month's free family festival. From mid-October, the Manoa Stream clearing project also arrives on the Woodlawn Drive side of the same property.
That overlap shapes the next two months. Mondays through Fridays, you'll share the area with crews and traffic control. The weekend courtyard, and two of the farmers market days, keep running.
At the Manoa Neighborhood Board's September 2 meeting, a resident speaking for Be Ready Manoa said the group's annual disaster preparedness fair was set for Saturday, September 19, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Manoa Marketplace Courtyard. It was free and open to everyone. The sponsor list was local. It included Bank of Hawaii, Starbucks, Manoa Marketplace itself, Manoa Valley Church, and Roosevelt High School's Junior ROTC.
Be Ready Manoa shared two more things at that meeting that most residents may not know about.
The first is the "Manoa Coconut Wireless," a walkie-talkie network of about 120 residents. According to the minutes, it was used to pass along real-time information during the recent storm, and the group is still recruiting. One board member asked whether Noelani and Hokulani schools and the state library on Woodlawn Drive could be warned directly when flooding looks likely. The answer was that they could be invited to join the network.
The second is a plan the group is working on with Board of Water Supply Chief Engineer Ernie Lau. It would bring back emergency water distribution through manifolds installed on fire hydrants along Manoa's gravity-fed water lines. When a board member asked, the resident confirmed the hydrant water would not be chlorinated and would need to be boiled before use.
A water plan and a radio network got their public pitch at a shopping center. That tells you how the valley's gatherings are set up. The courtyard is the flat, central, open-air space that the Marketplace, a church, a bank, a coffee chain and a high school program can all share.
The courtyard plays this role partly because the center came through March in usable shape. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported that businesses at Manoa Marketplace were largely spared in the March 23 flooding. Water did reach the back side along Woodlawn Drive, and the Longs Drugs closed around 2 p.m. but wasn't directly hit. Jonathan Loui, a BRUG Bakery employee who started work around 6:30 that morning, told the paper how it looked from inside:
"There was strong rain, I could see all of it outside, but it's been raining pretty hard the past couple weeks so I kind of just disregarded it. It looked completely fine but then customers were telling me that there was heavy flooding so that's how I found out about it."
The same report noted that about two weeks earlier, during a Kona-low storm, the Marketplace lost power, BRUG included. Customers told the bakery staff what was going on outside. That's the same kind of word-of-mouth the Coconut Wireless is trying to organize.
The stream work is the direct follow-up to those storms. The City's Department of Facility Maintenance, the state Department of Transportation and contractor Goodfellow Bros., Inc. started clearing Manoa Stream on Monday, August 3, 2026. Hawaii News Now reported that the project is funded from a $9.5 million state Major Disaster Fund allocation for the Manoa Stream project and other stream work. Crews remove trees, rocks and brush, regrade nearby slopes, and dredge to restore the channel bottom.
The City's July 28 announcement described about two months of work between Kahaloa Drive and the Woodlawn Bridge. The three-phase schedule Hawaii News Now published on August 4 runs longer:
Those dates were an August forecast, and the work is "weather permitting." Treat the start of Phase Three as approximate. Crew hours are Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Special-duty police officers handle traffic, and electronic message boards announce planned closures. Questions go to the Department of Facility Maintenance at (808) 766-3343 or [email protected].
Volunteers have been part of the project too. At the September 2 board meeting, member Bosel thanked a City deputy director for working with community stream volunteers, which made it possible to relocate fish and other species during the clearing.
Comparing the Marketplace's schedule with the crew's makes the next two months easier to plan.
According to the center, its farmers market runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Courtyard Plaza, in partnership with the Hawaii Farm Bureau, and closes on holidays. The Marketplace calendar lists the next market for Tuesday, October 6. The Tuesday and Thursday markets fall inside the crew's weekday window. The Sunday market falls outside it.
The stores open early and close late. These are the hours each business has posted on the Marketplace website, so check before you go out of your way:
The Longs Drugs at 2750 Woodlawn Drive lists store hours of 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day. If the Woodlawn side is busy with crews, the Safeway at 2855 East Manoa Road is open 24 hours.
The center also has a new owner at the top. On March 12, 2026, Alexander & Baldwin announced it had been acquired by a joint venture of MW Group, funds affiliated with Blackstone Real Estate, and DivcoWest, which made the company privately held. A&B's property page says the Marketplace has finished a refresh that added seating, outdoor gathering spaces and a keiki play area. Those are the features that let a shopping center host a community fair.
Most Manoa events this fall happen on the courtyard's weekend schedule. The main exceptions are Lyon Arboretum events, which run on weekdays.
Lyon's normal schedule is close to the crews' schedule. The Arboretum is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and closed on weekends and state and federal holidays. Admission is free with a suggested $10 donation, no reservations are needed right now, and parking is first-come, first-served. It now offers walk-up docent-led tours. Because its Seed Conservation Lab is being renovated, it warns of frequent closures on short notice and asks visitors to check its homepage first.
The December sale includes plants from Lyon's own Horticulture Department, Hui Ku Maoli Ola, Olomana Tropicals, Lang's Nursery and Nuʻuanu Orchids. It also has crafts from David Shepard Hawaii, NaKui Studio and Meli Hawaii, plus food and drinks from the Khao and Papas food truck, Da Poi Boi 808 and Bitter Root Brewery.
On weekdays from mid-October to early December, the Woodlawn side will have crews, officers and message boards. On Sundays, the Marketplace courtyard hosts the farmers market as usual, and on October 24 it hosts the Fall Fest.
If this fall's stream work and courtyard calendar have you wondering how Woodlawn Drive and the blocks around the Marketplace look to today's buyers, Sherine Duncan and the Hawaii LUX Team can walk through it with you, street by street. Start with a free home valuation, and we'll explain what's driving the number for your part of the valley.
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