For twenty years, the end unit at 45 Riverwalk Place was the dark window everyone in Port Imperial walked past. Prime river frontage, unobstructed Manhattan views, and nothing behind the glass but litigation between a condo association and a commercial owner that dragged on long enough to outlast an entire market cycle. Inland on Bergenline Avenue, a different kind of stall was playing out at 4901 Bergenline Avenue, where a mixed-use tower had been floated on paper since at least 2019 before its ground floor ever saw a tenant sign a lease.
This year, both finally resolved. Not eventually, not on separate timelines years apart. In the same stretch of 2026, West New York filled its most-watched waterfront vacancy and its longest-pending Bergenline storefront, on opposite ends of a town that has historically grown one side at a time.
The Window That Went Dark for Two Decades
West & Co. opened its doors at 45 Riverwalk Place on May 1, 2026, a few days behind the late-April target the operators had floated earlier in the spring. Given that the space had sat vacant for more than twenty years while the condo association and commercial owner fought it out in court, a few days of delay barely registers.
The restaurant comes from Jeremy Casilli, who already runs several waterfront concepts in the area, including Drift Restaurant and Bar at Lincoln Harbor in Weehawken and Hudson & Co. in Jersey City. West & Co. is his first project specifically in West New York, and operations are led by Wander DeBrito, a French Culinary Institute graduate whose background includes stints at Del Posto and Gramercy Tavern.
The design leans hard into a 1920s brasserie aesthetic: curved banquettes, hand-carved corbels, layered ceilings, and a bar built around the idea of a "liquor candy shop." The room seats up to 250, a scale that reshapes what a dinner reservation looks like in this corridor. Behind the kitchen sits The Wax Room, a hidden speakeasy built around a vinyl collection and turntable setup, the kind of detail that turns a restaurant into a destination rather than just a new option on the list.
West & Co. now sits inside the Riverwalk Place retail promenade alongside existing anchors like Son Cubano, Ben and Jerry's, and Alpha Fit Club. That's the part worth sitting with: this isn't a corridor that lacked activity. It's a corridor where nearly every unit was already spoken for, except the one with the best view.
A Second Concept Is Already Lined Up Behind It
If a twenty-year vacancy filling once felt like an anomaly, a second concept moving into the same waterfront strip within months makes it look more like momentum. Dear Jac is taking over the former Gioia Modern Italian Kitchen space at 20 Avenue at Port Imperial, with a Fall 2026 opening teased on social media under the tagline "where everyday cravings meet something better."
Details are still thin. No confirmed menu, no confirmed hours, just a minimalist rabbit logo and a countdown. What's notable is the site itself, not the concept. This is the same waterfront dining corridor West & Co. just filled, and Port Imperial's stretch of restaurants and cafes has typically absorbed new tenants one at a time, not two in the same calendar year.
Inland on Bergenline, a Corner Everyone Had Been Watching Through the Windows
While the waterfront was filling in, Bergenline Avenue was working through its own long wait. Leon Marketplace opened at 4901 Bergenline Avenue on September 4, 2026, just days before this piece went up. The roughly 10,000-square-foot independent grocery store sits on the ground floor of The Station, a newly built residential tower that had been on the drawing board since at least 2019, when an earlier version of the project was floated as a 97-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail. By early 2026, that retail space was confirmed as fully leased to León Marketplace ahead of the store's opening, according to a CBRE listing marketing the completed building to investors.
The store appears to be connected to the Siad and Zariyeh families, who operate a handful of Fresh n Save Marketplaces, two Windsor Farms Markets, and a Key Food in New York City, though ownership hasn't been formally confirmed. What sets Leon apart isn't size. Bergenline already has plenty of grocery options. It's the in-store bakery, a feature that's genuinely rare among the smaller, urban supermarkets that dominate this stretch of the avenue. Produce sits in the front-left corner with a service butcher counter alongside it, the deli and bakery wrap the back-left, dairy curves around the back-right, and frozen runs the length of the last aisle. Prices lean higher on organic and specialty items than the big chains charge, a tradeoff for the kind of format this corridor hasn't had much of before.
Five blocks south, La Roca has anchored the neighborhood's grocery scene for years. The two stores now stock plenty that the other doesn't, which is less a rivalry than a sign that Bergenline can support more than one version of a full-service market.
Bergenline Was Never the Problem
None of this happened because Bergenline needed proof of life. It's the longest commercial avenue in New Jersey, home to more than 300 restaurants, cafes, and markets packed along a corridor once nicknamed Havana on the Hudson, and still the route for the neighborhood's biggest parades. The avenue's density was never in question. What took years to resolve was a single parcel, one proposed tower that sat as a rendering for the better part of a decade before its retail space found a tenant.
That's the real parallel to the waterfront story. Riverwalk Place wasn't short on foot traffic or reservations for two decades. It was short on one available unit, tied up in a dispute that had nothing to do with demand. Bergenline wasn't short on grocery options. It was short on a completed building at one specific address. Two different corridors, two different kinds of delay, and both resolved within months of each other in 2026.
For a town that has usually seen growth cluster on one side or the other, that's the part worth noticing. Bergenline is still going to be the street with the parade route and nearly three hundred places to eat. The waterfront is still where you take an out-of-town guest for the skyline photo. Neither side is becoming something else. What changed is that the stalled pieces on both ends finished clearing at the same time, which hasn't been the typical shape of a year here.
If You're Walking It This Weekend
Both stretches are close enough together that a Saturday can cover them without much planning:
- Start at Riverwalk Place for a look at West & Co.'s dining room, then walk the promenade past Son Cubano and Ben and Jerry's toward the ferry terminal.
- Head inland to 4901 Bergenline Avenue to see Leon Marketplace's bakery and butcher counter in person, then compare notes five blocks south at La Roca.
- Keep an eye on 20 Avenue at Port Imperial for the Dear Jac signage. A Fall 2026 opening means the window between now and whenever the doors open is the last stretch of anticipation before it's just another stop on the corridor.
None of this is a reason to make a decision about anything. It's a reason to walk both ends of town this month and see what's actually different, because for once, it's not just one corridor doing the changing.
If you're curious about what any of this means for property values or timing in West New York, or you just want a local's read on where the neighborhood is headed next, Keys With Sonia knows this stretch of Hudson County block by block. Let's Connect whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
