For decades, Berkeley Heights had one Main Street, one train stop on the Gladstone Branch, and a small handful of restaurants residents rotated through on weeknights. That arithmetic is changing this fall. The 185-acre campus off Connell Drive, long known to commuters as an office park, is opening its first wave of restaurants and entertainment venues, and the shortlist of names is unusually ambitious for a township this size.
The thesis worth stating plainly: Berkeley Heights is quietly becoming a two-downtown town. The old grid around Springfield Avenue is not going anywhere, but the new grid at The District at The Park is arriving with concepts that residents used to drive to Montclair, Morristown, or Jersey City to reach. If you live here, the next six months rewrite where you eat on a Thursday.
The fall rollout, in order of arrival
The Connell Company's $500 million redevelopment of the former Connell Corporate Park has been under construction long enough that most residents have stopped tracking the timeline. Here is where it actually stands. Six new retailers announced 2026 openings at The Park, a former office park in Berkeley Heights, on a 185-acre campus. At the heart of the site is The District at The Park, a 60-acre walkable downtown featuring 160,000 square feet of retail, restaurants, and entertainment.
The summer wave arrived first. Three food concepts are family-owned Four Spoons Ice Cream Company, Doner Shack serving Mediterranean-style street food and kebabs, and Cafe Exchange, which offers premium coffee, food, and wine. Prime IV Hydration & Wellness opened a spa-like wellness facility with IV vitamin infusions. Dogtopia offers spa services for dogs as well as doggie daycare and boarding. Rounding out the list is the flagship location of Greatness Wins, an athletic apparel brand founded by Chris Riccobono, Derek Jeter, and Misty Copeland.
The fall wave is the one worth clearing your calendar for. The District at The Park will feature approximately 60,000 square feet of entertainment and dining concepts, with openings anticipated to begin in Fall 2026. That phase includes three anchors:
- Emberside Brewery, an on-site brewery. The ground-up operation plans to debut in 2026 with a craft beer lineup under the guidance of a brew master from Sierra Nevada Brewing.
- Rosa Azul, split into two concepts. A Mexican restaurant which will boast artful cuisine and hand-crafted cocktails, as well as a taqueria that will offer window service for the outdoor garden and playground area.
- BASH, the venue that will get talked about most. A speakeasy style venue featuring a wood-fired steakhouse, thoughtfully designed event spaces and multiple bars including a hi-fi listening bar, as well as 14 of New Jersey's first duckpin bowling lanes and gaming area including pool tables, dart boards, shuffleboards, and more; all owned and operated by Table & Banter Hospitality.
Why duckpin bowling matters more than the brewery
Craft breweries are no longer a novelty in this stretch of Union and Somerset County. Fourteen duckpin lanes are. The nearest comparable rooms are in Brooklyn and Baltimore, and the fact that Table & Banter chose Berkeley Heights for what it is describing as one of New Jersey's first duckpin installations is worth reading as a signal, not a footnote. Operators build destination venues where they expect the surrounding density to support a Wednesday night, not just a Saturday. A hi-fi listening bar in the same building points to the same reading of the market.
What that means for a resident: the calculation for hosting out-of-town family in November shifts. You do not need to drive them into Manhattan for the evening. The evening is on Connell Drive.
The Boschetto question
The single most instructive lease at The Park may be the restaurant that has not yet opened its doors here. Montclair restaurant Boschetto will open its second location at The Park in Berkeley Heights. The new footprint nearly doubles Boschetto's Montclair spot.
Restaurants that succeed in Montclair rarely pick their second location by throwing a dart. They pick a market that looks like the one they already understand: dense enough to support a full dining room on a weeknight, affluent enough to accept a Montclair price point, and underserved enough that the local competition does not already fill that lane. Co-founder and CEO Robert Spina said they could not think of a better fit than The Park. He touched on exactly the kind of high-touch, resort-style environment The Connell Co. has leaned into with its meticulous planning and execution. "We looked at many sites before deciding to put a Boschetto here," he said. "Nothing compares to the uniqueness of this location."
Read that as an operator's read of Berkeley Heights, not as marketing copy. It is a data point about what the neighborhood is becoming.
What is still true on the old Main Street
None of this displaces the restaurants residents have been going to for years. Grain & Cane, which sits on the same Connell campus and predates the current redevelopment, is still the neighborhood table it has been. Grain and Cane is your home for hospitality in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, an homage to family nostalgia, a neighborhood table built on the Connell legacy, as leading American rice and sugar cane purveyors and community idealists. Café Vincotto is still doing contemporary European at the higher end of the local price band. Delicious Heights is still the sports-and-burgers option a short walk from the Berkeley Heights stop on the NJ Transit Gladstone Branch. Pastrami House Deli and Neelam still anchor the lunch rotation.
The point is not that the old grid is being replaced. The point is that a resident's weekly rotation is about to have two grids to draw from, and the second grid has 328 apartments feeding foot traffic into it. The District at The Park is a vibrant 60-acre downtown anchored by a walkable main street featuring approximately 160,000 square feet of retail, dining, and entertainment.
The residential piece, briefly
If the restaurants are the reason to walk over, the apartments are the reason there will be a crowd there when you arrive. Leasing launched at RT500 in June. Managed by Greystar, the Round Table Residences-branded building stands 11 stories. The 179-unit mix also includes amenities such as a rooftop pool, fitness center, coworking space and more. Move-ins are anticipated to start in August.
For a township that has been overwhelmingly single-family for its entire modern history, 179 new households arriving inside a single building, walkable to the restaurants opening around them, is the underappreciated variable. It is what makes a duckpin bowling operator's math work.
The World Cup wildcard
Layer one more thing onto the fall and spring calendars. The Berkeley Heights World Cup 2026 Task Force, launched earlier this year, kicked off its meetings this fall. The FIFA 2026 World Cup will be the biggest sporting event in history. MetLife Stadium/New York New Jersey Stadium in East Rutherford is the location for the World Cup final on Sunday, July 19, 2026.
The first big event in Berkeley Heights will be Saturday, June 13, at Veterans Memorial Park as the Township kicks off the tournament to coincide with the first matches being held at MetLife Stadium. MetLife Stadium will host eight games, including the World Cup Final on July 19, 2026. The tournament is expected to generate over $2 billion in economic activity and draw more than 1 million visitors to the NY/NJ area.
Berkeley Heights is not a host city, but it is roughly forty minutes from the stadium, has hotel rooms on the Connell campus in the 176-key Embassy Suites, and now has a walkable district with bars and restaurants opening the same season. That is a coincidence of timing that Township leadership has clearly noticed.
A resident's fall shortlist
If you want a compact version of what to actually do in the next few months:
- Walk the loop between Grain & Cane and the District's Main Street once before the crowds figure it out.
- Watch for Emberside Brewery's opening announcement. A brewer trained at Sierra Nevada is worth a first pour.
- Book Boschetto early. Second-location openings from established Montclair operators tend to be reservation-difficult for the first two months.
- Save June 13 for the Veterans Memorial Park World Cup kickoff.
- Check the Township calendar at berkeleyheights.gov for Recreation Commission programming, which continues to run its free community events, summer concerts, and Santa Visit through the calendar year.
The read on the neighborhood
Berkeley Heights spent a long time being described, accurately, as a quiet Union County commuter town with excellent transit access and a small downtown. That description is now incomplete. A 185-acre mixed-use district with a walkable main street, a hotel, a fitness center, an eleven-story apartment tower, and a restaurant roster that includes a Montclair transplant and a duckpin bowling venue is not a suburban office park anymore. It is a second downtown, and it is opening on a fall timeline.
For homeowners already here, the practical takeaway is simpler than the redevelopment scale suggests: the amenity map of your own township is being redrawn this season, and it is worth walking through in person before the reviews arrive.
If you would like a private conversation about how the changes at The District at The Park are shaping the Berkeley Heights market, The McGurl Team at Prominent Properties Sotheby's International Realty is available to Request a Private Consultation.
