"Lot of people from Westchester, New Rochelle, city too," Kemal Cobic told News 12 this spring, describing the early customers pulling into The Silent Sea, the Greek restaurant he'd opened on City Island Avenue a month earlier. Cobic brought Greek cuisine and fresh fish to a strip that already had more seafood houses per block than almost anywhere else in the Bronx, and it worked. People were driving in from three counties for a restaurant that hadn't existed a season earlier.
A few doors down that same spring, Lickety Split reopened under new ownership after its space sat empty for more than a year. Cozy Cove, a family-owned play space, opened less than two weeks before a News 12 crew showed up to film it. All three openings got covered as good news for City Island. All three were also food, family entertainment, or both. Meanwhile, according to the City Island Chamber of Commerce, more than a dozen storefronts on the avenue stayed empty through that same stretch.
That's not a contradiction. It's a pattern, and this fall's calendar makes it easier to see than usual.
Two Restaurant Weeks, One Growing Guest List
City Island ran two organized restaurant promotions in 2026. The first was City Island Restaurant Week, April 7 through 12, with fifteen restaurants participating, including ATIK, Black Whale, Crab Shanty, Little Frida's Eatery, Little Greece, Sammy's Fish Box, and Sammy's Smokehouse BBQ & Grill. The second was Savor the Bronx, produced by the Bronx Tourism Council in partnership with the Borough President's office, running July 6 through 12 with eleven City Island locations offering specials, among them:
- 2 Paizans Pizzeria Cucina
- City Island Diner
- City Island Lobster House
- Crab Shanty
- Little Greece
- Sea Shore Restaurant
- The Silent Sea
- The Snug
Both weeks leaned on the same core group of long-running seafood and Italian spots, with newcomers like The Silent Sea folded into the lineup within months of opening. The Chamber has a number for this churn: since 2023, 22 businesses have opened or reopened storefronts or service locations on the island and joined as members. That's a real figure, and it's the one the Chamber leads with in its own materials.
What "More Than a Dozen" Vacant Storefronts Actually Means
The same News 12 segment that covered Cobic, Lickety Split, and Cozy Cove also carried the harder number: even with that run of openings, more than a dozen storefronts on City Island Avenue remained vacant as of this spring. Read those two facts side by side and the shape of the problem gets clearer. The 22 openings since 2023 are disproportionately restaurants, ice cream shops, and a children's play space. What's stayed empty is everything else: the general retail that doesn't come with a built-in reason for someone from New Rochelle to make the drive.
A seafood restaurant on City Island sells a destination. A gift shop or a clothing store has to compete with every other gift shop and clothing store in the Bronx, and most of those don't require a bridge crossing to reach. Restaurant weeks work because they're solving a problem the island already has an answer for: people already come here to eat. Nobody's running a comparable week for anything else on the block.
What the Chamber Is Already Doing About It
Monica Glick, speaking for the Chamber after this spring's restaurant week, put the gap in plain terms:
"We hope among them might be some people interested in maybe opening a business."
Restaurant week brings the crowds. Turning those visitors into future shopkeepers is a separate task, and the Chamber has started treating it as one. In an April post announcing the Savor the Bronx lineup, the Chamber said it was "planning a way to spotlight City Island's other unique shops and businesses this fall as part of 'Treasures of City Island.'" No date has been announced yet. But the framing matters: shops are getting their own event, separate from the restaurant promotions, because the Chamber knows the two don't pull the same audience the same way.
The Shops That Never Needed Saving
Not every storefront on the island is waiting on a rescue plan. Kaleidoscope Gallery has been open since 1998, when jeweler Paul Klein founded it as Exotiqa International Arts before revamping it in 2010. It now carries jewelry alongside local artwork, toys, and housewares, the kind of inventory that doesn't have a direct competitor two blocks away. Klein also currently serves as the Chamber's president, which means the same person balancing the island's restaurant-week math is also running one of the shops proving the model works when it's specific enough.
Focal Point Gallery has been showing work by Bronx artists since photographer Ron Terner founded it in 1974, hosting exhibitions and concerts that don't compete with anything a chain could replicate. And 239 Play, a vintage shop set in a building dating to the 1860s, sells throwback toys and games that draw people in for the object, not the location. None of these three needed a restaurant-week-style promotional push to survive. They found an identity narrow enough that City Island Avenue's foot traffic problem doesn't apply to them the same way it does to a storefront selling something replaceable.
What Already Happened and What's Still Ahead
Earlier this month, the Chamber ran its Fall Arts and Crafts Fair, a City Island tradition that's been going for more than 25 years, with dozens of jewelry, photography, and textile vendors setting up along the avenue. The fair's clam chowder contest, held at Hawkins Street Park, had City Island restaurants competing for bragging rights on New England versus Manhattan-style chowder, judged by whoever showed up to taste both.
There's a bigger number sitting behind the fair. In the 2026 Best of the Bronx program, 31 City Island Chamber member businesses picked up nominations across 46 categories, up from 36 categories in 2024, when City Island businesses captured 27 wins. The jump in category count says something the restaurant weeks don't capture on their own: recognition on the island is broadening past the seafood houses that get the News 12 segments, into services and specialty retail that don't get the same camera time.
The Treasures of City Island event is still the one to watch. It was teased in the spring with no date attached, which means it's either coming this fall or it's slipping to next year. Either way, it's the Chamber's clearest step yet toward giving the retail side of City Island Avenue a promotion designed around what shops need.
Until that event has a date, the storefronts on the island will keep telling two different stories depending on which block you're standing on. One side of that story already found its footing. The other is still waiting for its own version of restaurant week.
If you own or lease commercial space along a corridor like City Island Avenue and want a clearer read on how foot traffic, seasonal demand, and vacancy are actually moving on the ground, Asset CRG tracks retail conditions across the Bronx's most distinct commercial strips, block by block rather than by borough-wide averages.
