Walk past 70 Union Street on a Saturday morning and you will see what residents have seen for most of the last four years: a papered-over storefront inside a nineteenth-century train depot, sitting a few dozen feet from the swings at Newton Centre Green. The windows have been dark since Jamie's on Union closed in 2022. Before that, the Deluxe Station Diner ran there for years under the same ownership. Every season since has produced another round of guessing about who might finally take the space on.
That guessing is finally settling, and not because one restaurant decided the address was worth the risk. Three separate storefronts within a three-minute walk of the Green got stuck this year behind the same kind of paperwork, and all three are clearing, or have already cleared, inside the same six-week stretch that also brings the city's biggest annual gathering back to the same three streets. If you live within walking distance of the Green, that timing is worth understanding before you plan your October Saturdays.
What Was Actually Stuck
None of these spaces sat empty for lack of interest. Each one hit a different stage of the same bureaucratic sequence that stands between a finished build-out and an open sign, and each stage took roughly the same handful of months to clear.
| Address | What Was There | What's Coming or Now Open | Status as of Early September |
|---|---|---|---|
| 70 Union Street | Jamie's on Union, closed 2022 | Lockheart, a second location of the Wellesley taco and cocktail bistro | Newton's license approved in June; state alcohol approval still pending as of mid-August |
| 22-28 Langley Road | Walgreens, closed 2022 | Newton Asian Mart | Open since June, after two separate stop-work orders over occupancy paperwork |
| 740A Beacon Street | Jake's Falafel Corner | Formosa Bun & Dumpling Factory | Open, serving Taiwanese night-market fare |
The depot is the most visible holdup, and the one with the longest paper trail. A company managed by Anthony Killough paid roughly two million dollars for the building in September 2025, and city permit records show a roughly $1.2 million interior build-out underway since early 2024, including a demolition permit that January and a fire-protection system acceptance test in June. Newton's Board of License Commissioners voted 3-0 on June 16 to approve a liquor, common victualler, and entertainment license for the new Lockheart, contingent on final paperwork. Eight weeks later, the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission's roster of active Newton licenses still showed nothing issued for Union Depot LLC.
Asked about the delay in mid-August, the applicants' attorney told Fig City News that the restaurant was waiting on the state and expected to open
"a matter of days... a few weeks hopefully."
That is a real estimate from someone close to the project, not a firm date, which means the honest advice for anyone walking past this month is to expect an opening any week rather than a specific one.
The grocery store a few blocks over on Langley Road tells a similar story with a shorter runway. Newton Asian Mart took over the old Walgreens space, itself a Medi-Mart pharmacy back in 1974, and by late April the store looked finished from the sidewalk, with stocked shelves, filled seafood tanks, and pallets of bagged rice visible through the front window. It still received a stop-work order on April 24 for lacking a certificate of occupancy. The temporary certificate came through on June 9, and the store has been open since, filling a gap that previously sent Newton shoppers driving to Quincy, Malden, or other larger Asian markets for fresh groceries.
Formosa Bun & Dumpling Factory had the smoothest path of the three, moving into the former Jake's Falafel Corner on Beacon Street with a Taiwanese night-market menu built around fried bao cooked on a cast iron pan, steamed buns, and grilled Taiwanese sausage.
The Loop You Can Actually Walk
Put the three addresses on a map and they form a loop you can walk from the Green in under ten minutes: up Union Street toward the depot, over to Beacon for dumplings, down to Langley for groceries and, come mid-October, the overflow lot for the Harvest Fair. A year ago that same loop required a car for at least one leg of it. Union Street had a boarded storefront where a restaurant used to be. Langley Road had a pharmacy that closed in 2022 and stayed vacant. Beacon Street had a falafel counter that had already turned over.
For a resident, the practical shift is what a Saturday errand run looks like now. A grocery stop for fresh seafood and Taiwanese sausage at the Asian Mart used to mean driving to another town. Now it is a stop on the way to dumplings at Formosa. Once the depot's takeout window is running, the same loop adds a plate of tacos eaten on a bench at the Green, which is the kind of afternoon that used to require picking one destination and driving to it.
The Same Six Weeks as the Fair
The timing lines up with more than convenience. The Newton Harvest Fair returns to the Green and the Langley Road parking lot on Saturday, October 17, and Sunday, October 18. Saturday is carnival rides and food trucks only, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday brings the full event, with more than 100 crafters and vendors, Green Newton's GreenEXPO, live music on two stages, and free pumpkin decorating courtesy of Wegmans Chestnut Hill, running from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is the kind of weekend that reliably draws several thousand visitors from surrounding towns into exactly the footprint where these three storefronts sit.
Two weeks earlier, on Sunday, October 4, Historic Newton runs its own fall tradition at the Jackson Homestead on Washington Street. Hayfest is the older, quieter counterpart to the Harvest Fair, built around apple cider pressing, candle dipping, and corn husk doll-making, a hands-on look at nineteenth-century Newton rather than a commercial festival. Read together, the two events bracket the same six weeks from two different angles, one tied to the city's living history and the other to its present-day foot traffic.
That overlap is what makes the Harvest Fair weekend the actual test date for everything described above, not a press release or a permit filing. If the depot's takeout window is running by October 18, thousands of fair visitors will get their first look at whether four years of speculation about 70 Union Street were worth it, at the same moment vendors set up folding tables in the Langley Road lot next to a grocery store that spent April stuck behind a stop-work order. The Green has had individual pieces of good news all year. October 17 and 18 are when they either add up to something or don't.
For anyone who has lived near the Green through the last four winters of a dark storefront, that is worth watching in person rather than taking on faith. Walk the loop before the fair, then walk it again during, and you will have a better read on Newton Centre's fall than any single opening announcement gives you.
The Steph Crawford Group pays attention to changes like these because they shape a neighborhood's daily rhythm long before they show up in any sales data. If you're curious what a busier Union Street corridor might mean for your own address down the road, our Newton neighborhood guide is a good place to start, and our home valuation tool is there whenever you want a clearer picture of where things stand.
