For three years, the parking lot at Glen Plaza on Glenville Street sat mostly empty. The Stop & Shop that anchored it closed in June 2023, and the storefronts around it went quiet with it. Next door, the manager at Val's Fine Wines and Liquors kept telling anyone who asked that he hoped a grocery store would come back soon. A few blocks away on Pemberwick Road, the restaurant space that had been Centro, and then briefly The Lion, sat dark too. If you lived in Glenville and needed a supermarket cart or a dinner reservation that didn't involve a bridge or a parkway, you were driving to Armonk, Rye Brook, or Port Chester to get it.
That run is over. In the span of eight weeks this year, both ends of Glenville's short commercial stretch came back to life, and the neighborhood's daily errand loop closed for the first time since the Stop & Shop went dark.
The Corner That Reopened Twice in One Summer
Greenwich Grill opened in mid-July at The Mill Waterfall on 328 Pemberwick Road, in the same space that had been Centro for years and, more recently, The Lion Brasserie. The Mill itself is a five-building mixed-use property along the Byram River, anchoring a former 1881 mill building and a converted 1981 office building with apartments and retail. The new restaurant sits right beside the waterfall the property is named for, with a patio that looks out over the water.
Then, on September 9, DeCicco & Sons opened its doors at 21 Glenville Street, in the exact building the old Stop & Shop vacated. The roughly 20,000-square-foot store marks the Pelham, New York-based grocer's first Connecticut location and its first expansion beyond New York in more than 50 years of family ownership. The ribbon-cutting drew Selectwoman Rachel Khanna, State Representatives Steve Meskers, Hector Arzeno, and Tina Courpas, and Chamber of Commerce executive director Andrea Blume, which tells you something about how much this single reopening mattered on the town's calendar.
"Glenville felt like a natural fit for us," said CEO John DeCicco Jr. "It's a close-knit community that values quality, local businesses and personal service."
What's Actually Inside
The DeCicco family opened its first store in the Bronx in 1973, and the current generation, John Jr., Joseph Jr., and Christopher, built it into an eleven-store chain across Westchester and Putnam counties before deciding Glenville was worth crossing the state line for. The Greenwich store carries the same format that built that following: a full produce and deli section, seafood delivered daily, fresh sushi, a bakery making its own goods, a juice bar, a chopped salad station, and a hot food and salad bar for the grab-and-dinner crowd. The store is also extending its school rebate program to Greenwich, letting shoppers direct a share of their spending toward local schools just by shopping the way they already do.
Down the road at Greenwich Grill, the menu leans upscale-casual rather than quick-serve. The dinner list runs from a Greenwich chopped salad and Caesar to desserts like lemon ricotta cheesecake and olive oil cake, with a cocktail program built around house infusions, including a London Mist made with Earl Grey Empress gin and lavender and a GG Espresso Martini with vanilla bean vodka. There's a dedicated bar space called The G-Bar for anyone who wants to stop in without committing to a full table. The restaurant is open Sunday through Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday until 11.
Two Ends of the Same Short Walk
What makes this moment different from a normal run of restaurant and retail news is the geography. Glenville Street and Pemberwick Road are the same short stretch, and DeCicco's and Greenwich Grill sit close enough together that a resident can genuinely walk between them. For three years, both ends of that stretch had a closed sign on them at the same time. Now both are open, within about two months of each other, which means the corner didn't just get one new business. It got its whole shape back.
That matters more in Glenville than it might somewhere with a denser retail core, because the neighborhood's commercial center has always been small and specific: a post office, a hardware store, a pharmacy, a dry cleaner, a couple of gas stations, and whatever restaurant or grocery anchored the two ends. Losing both the supermarket and the sit-down restaurant at once didn't just mean two empty storefronts. It meant the loop that held the daily rhythm of the neighborhood together went slack for three years.
A Week in Glenville Now
Here's what that loop actually looks like again, stitched from what's open on the ground today:
- Morning coffee and a sandwich at The Xchange on Pemberwick Road, a family business now in its ninth decade
- A produce and deli run at DeCicco & Sons, with the hot bar as a backup if dinner plans fall through
- Lunch or a quick slice at Glenville Pizza or G*Ville Deli, both still exactly where they've always been
- An afternoon at Pemberwick Park, which has the ballfield, tennis and basketball courts, and the Yantorno Community Center, or a shorter stop at Glenville Playground on Pemberwick Road
- Dinner and a cocktail at Greenwich Grill, patio seating by the waterfall if the weather holds
None of this required a drive over the state line. That's the part that changes daily life here more than any single new storefront could on its own.
The Neighborhood That Never Stopped Organizing
Glenville didn't sit passively through the three-year gap either. The Pemberwick-Glenville Association, an active group of residents and business owners, kept meeting and advocating through the vacancy, and the neighborhood's long-running Pemberwick-Glenville Day celebration each September kept happening in the park regardless of what was or wasn't open on the main drag. That's worth sitting with. The community identity here was never dependent on the storefronts being full. It just got a lot easier to live day to day now that they are.
If you're already in Glenville, none of this changes what you love about the neighborhood. It just means the version of daily life you've been improvising around for three years, driving to Armonk for a real grocery haul or picking a restaurant in Rye Brook because nothing local fit, doesn't require the workaround anymore. The corner filled back in.
If you're weighing a move onto this stretch, or you're just curious what a house near a reopened supermarket and waterfall restaurant is worth these days, The Rosato Team knows this corner of Greenwich block by block. Get Your Home Valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
