Between February and September 2026, four storefronts on Jersey City's Newark Avenue Pedestrian Plaza reopened under new names, and a fifth was listed with a new whiskey bar on the way. None of them needed a new building. A Sichuan kitchen replaced a ramen shop, a café replaced a 13-year neighborhood fixture, and a bar space that sat dark for months came back as a steak and raw bar with a second concept in the back. Over the same period, exactly one property on the strip got approval to be torn down and rebuilt. That is 167-169 Newark Avenue, home of 99¢ Dream.
So the plaza's footprint is holding still while its tenant roster turns over quickly. If you walk the strip regularly, the shopfronts look the same as they did in January and the names on them are different. The one building slated to change keeps the same street-level format as the rest of the strip.
The 2026 ledger, address by address
| Address | Before | 2026 tenant | What was reported |
|---|---|---|---|
| 123 Newark Ave | Not identified in reporting | Dagda, Irish pub | Soft-opened by April 15 |
| 125 Newark Ave | Roman Nose, closed November 2025 | Alessio's | Soft open May 19, officially open by June 9 |
| 136 Newark Ave | Not identified in reporting | House of Amrut, whiskey bar | Listed in a September 28 roundup |
| 143 Newark Ave | Better Days, reported closed by March 9 | Bembe Steak & Raw Bar; Steaks Shakes + Harmony | Partially open by August 28, grand opening announced for September 16 |
| 167-169 Newark Ave | 99¢ Dream | Approved four-story mixed-use building | Planning Board approval July 14 |
| 189 Newark Ave | Miso Ramen | Shanway Chengdu Kitchen | Reported open February 20 |
Shanway Chengdu Kitchen came first. Jersey Digs reported it open at 189 Newark Avenue on February 20, in the space Miso Ramen used to occupy. By April 15, Dagda had soft-opened as an Irish pub at 123 Newark Avenue.
Two doors from Dagda, Alessio's soft-opened at 125 Newark Avenue on May 19, moving into the former Roman Nose space. When Jersey Digs reported the café officially open on June 9, it noted that Roman Nose had run at that address for 13 years. In practice, a storefront that held one operator for more than a decade went dark for about six months and then reopened under a new name.
House of Amrut, a whiskey bar at 136 Newark Avenue, showed up in Hoboken Girl's September 28 roundup of new businesses. The listing sits under a "Now Open" heading, but the entry itself describes the bar as opening, so whether it is pouring yet should be confirmed directly.
143 Newark shows how a reopening actually unfolds
The address that took longest to come back is also the one that shows the process most clearly. Hoboken Girl reported Better Days permanently closed on March 9. The basement of the same building stayed in business the whole time. 143 Social, the speakeasy-style cocktail bar downstairs, kept operating while the ground floor sat empty.
When Jersey Digs reported on August 28 that Bembe Steak & Raw Bar had started its rollout, it described the ground floor as having been dark throughout 2026. The reopening came in stages. First came a soft-opened front bar running Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., with Steaks Shakes + Harmony set up as a casual concept in the back. According to Hoboken Girl, the Historic Downtown Special Improvement District then announced a grand opening for September 16.
By late September, the Hoboken Girl roundup listed Bembe and Steaks Shakes + Harmony as open at 143 Newark. One piece is still unfinished. A September 19 report from NY Matinee described Bembe's separate, more upscale steakhouse dining room as still planned, with no opening date announced. Bembe's own website lists kitchen service and Saturday dinner hours. It does not say whether that dining room has opened.
That puts one address on the strip in three different states this year. The main-floor bar closed, the basement bar stayed open, and the new ground-floor operator is opening its pieces one at a time. Because the building itself never changed, each concept could open whenever it was ready.
167-169 Newark is the one building that will change
At its July 14 meeting, Jersey City's Planning Board unanimously approved a plan to redevelop 167-169 Newark Avenue. Jersey Digs called the 99¢ Dream there one of the few dollar stores still left in Downtown. Jersey City Times described the store as a long-running stop for cheap hard goods near Barrow Street, the kind of place where $20 still went a long way even though the 99-cent price point was long gone.
The approved plan, as Jersey Digs reported it:
- A four-story, 48-foot building designed by Emara Ghobrial Architects, filed by 167-169 Newark Ave Realty LLC
- 15 residences: three one-bedrooms, nine two-bedrooms and three three-bedrooms
- 4,641 square feet of ground-floor retail with entrances on both the Newark Avenue and Columbus Drive sides
- A 2,547-square-foot shared roof deck, basement storage and a brown brick facade
- No new parking and no affordable units
The retail floor is what matters most for the plaza. A storefront you can enter from either side matches what Jersey Digs called the strip's existing feel, so the rebuild extends the current pattern of shops at the base and apartments above. When construction does happen, the address will likely be empty for longer than any of the 2026 turnovers, since those were tenant changes and this is demolition followed by new construction.
No date has been set for any of it. As of Jersey Digs' July 23 report, 99¢ Dream was still open and going strong, with no demolition or construction timeline announced. No later report has updated that status, so the store's current hours are the most reliable guide to whether it is still open.
Programming fills the gaps between tenants
If storefronts keep turning over and the buildings stay put, much of what keeps people on the strip falls to the group that runs the public space. The Historic Downtown Special Improvement District describes itself as a public-private partnership working with local businesses, property owners, neighborhood associations and city government to promote and improve the historic downtown. This year, its calendar lined up closely with the months when new tenants were opening.
On July 11, HDSID set up a 17-foot jumbotron on the plaza for a World Cup watch party, showing two matches from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., with a handmade market running from noon to 6 p.m. The 15th annual All About Downtown Street Fair followed on September 19, three days after Bembe's announced grand opening. TAPinto reported large crowds, with the plaza busy all day and past the scheduled 8 p.m. end. HDSID Executive Director Rachel Sieg told the outlet she would measure the fair's success by whether residents come back to shop and eat on the plaza afterward.
That standard explains why the events are scheduled the way they are. One crowded Saturday matters less than what it does for Alessio's on a weekday morning or Dagda on a weeknight. The next date on the calendar is Halloween.
Saturday, October 31, on the Newark Avenue Pedestrian Mall & Plaza
- HDSID's free Halloween Family Bash runs from noon to 8 p.m., with games, a corn maze, face-painting, pumpkins, a bouncy house and candy.
- Terror Tavern, an adults-only event on the plaza, is hosted by Grace O'Malley's Whiskey Chapel.
This will be the first big plaza event since the fall openings. It is a chance to try Bembe's front bar, Alessio's, Dagda and Shanway on the same walk, and to check whether 99¢ Dream is still open at the Barrow Street end.
There is still no 2026 reporting on changes to the plaza's outdoor dining rules or its physical layout. The pavement, the closed-to-traffic blocks and the buildings along them are the same as they were in January. Six storefront addresses changed this year. Four reopened with new tenants, House of Amrut was announced at a fifth, and the sixth, 167-169 Newark, is the only one approved to be rebuilt.
When tenants rotate this quickly on a corridor whose buildings stay put, the value of a ground-floor space depends on its layout, its frontage and how fast it can be re-leased. Asset CRG advises owners and retail tenants on mixed-use buildings along corridors like Newark Avenue. If you hold or are considering a storefront on a strip like this one, request a property valuation and off-market access, and we'll walk through how your space fits the current tenant pattern.
