DUMBO's waterfront has spent a decade building for the postcard: the Manhattan Bridge shot, the cobblestone backdrop, the line outside Time Out Market. This year the neighborhood's newest openings are doing something different. They're building for the person who already has a key to a building six blocks away. Four minutes south on foot, Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights is having its own reversal, filling storefronts that sat empty for years while a 50-story tower breaks ground at the block's edge. Neither shift is an accident, and neither shows up if you only skim the restaurant roundups.
The Waterfront Starts Feeding the People Who Live There
Ziggy's Roman Cafe opened November 13 at 15 Main Street, and its founders were explicit about why. Helen Zhang, who co-owns the two-story Italian spot with her husband Igor Hadzismajlovic of Employees Only, told amNewYork that DUMBO's heavy tourist traffic has left it short on "accessible, no-fuss restaurants that serve the people who live here." The restaurant's mezzanine has a soft-play area for kids during the day and turns into an adult hangout by night, a design choice aimed squarely at residents rather than day-trippers.
Fishs Eddy made a quieter but longer statement. The home goods retailer opened its DUMBO location at 81 Front Street in October 2025, complete with a vintage-style cafe and soda fountain, according to Eater's coverage of the launch. What most write-ups miss is the earlier chapter: Fishs Eddy briefly ran a shop on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights that closed in 2007 when rents rose, per the retailer's own company history. Eighteen years after leaving one part of this neighborhood, the brand came back to a different corner of it, and this time it signed a 10-year lease.
The newest name to join the list is Dumbo Diner. Chef John Coppola, who previously ran Pearl Street Restaurant a few blocks away, is opening a 3,000-square-foot all-day spot at 53 Pearl Street inside a building that once housed a 19th-century paint factory. Crain's New York Business reported the restaurant is designed to serve both the neighborhood's residents and its steady visitor traffic, with an opening targeted for this fall.
Empire Stores Keeps Adding Names
A few blocks over, the Empire Stores complex has become its own small ecosystem. Jean-Georges opened ABC Kitchens there, his first restaurant in Brooklyn, combining the greenmarket cooking of ABC Kitchen with the plant-based approach of ABCV and the global flavors of ABC Cocina under one roof. Kith opened its Kith Kids flagship in the same building, its second Kith Kids location and third Kith flagship in the borough where the brand started. Cecconi's serves Northern Italian food with Manhattan skyline views, and Soho House runs DUMBO House, its third New York City club, with a rooftop pool overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge. None of this happened in isolation. More than 150 design firms have moved into DUMBO in recent years, and Empire Stores' developers have leaned into that shift, mixing retail with maker space instead of chasing another big-box tenant.
What's Actually on the Calendar This Fall
| Date | Event | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Sept 13 | Back-to-School Party, car-free block party | Montague Street, Brooklyn Heights |
| Sept 13 – Oct 25 | Montague Street Open Streets, Sundays | Montague St, Clinton to Hicks |
| Sept 27 | Atlantic Antic street fair | Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn Heights to Boerum Hill |
| Oct 1 | DUMBO Art Season kickoff, First Thursday | DUMBO Archway and galleries |
| Oct 31 | Dumboween: March to the Arch, costume contest, trick-or-treating | Washington St to DUMBO Archway |
| October (date TBA) | Brooklyn Bridge Park Harvest Festival | Brooklyn Bridge Park |
The Montague Street Business Improvement District, working with the Brooklyn Heights Association and the city's Department of Transportation, is also running a pickleball tournament and a Blessing of the Animals at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church as part of the same Open Streets stretch, alongside a resident-only stoop sale where only Brooklyn Heights locals can apply for a table.
Montague Street's Long Vacancy Is Finally Filling
Montague Street's comeback matters because of how bad the stretch got. A Brooklyn Heights Association survey found one in five storefronts vacant, and the group launched a six-week resident survey to figure out what would bring shoppers back, according to Brooklyn Paper's reporting on the effort in early 2021. The most popular answer was simple: a new bookstore.
Five years later, the street looks different. L'Appartement4F opened this past July, joining the newer Montague Diner as anchors of the block. Books are Magic and the longtime bakery Lassen & Hennigs have held their ground through the empty years. Brooklyn Eagle quoted longtime observer Buzanski describing the shift directly: after the pandemic, Montague had been quite empty, but with the new arrivals, Brooklyn Heights has become a destination neighborhood again.
One quirk worth knowing if you've ever wondered why a below-street bookstore sits next to a walk-up dance studio: rent on Montague Street depends heavily on how many stairs separate a storefront from the sidewalk. Street-level space can run $35,000 a month, according to Brooklyn Eagle's reporting, while spaces reached by a flight of stairs often go for roughly a third of that. It's the reason the block reads like a jigsaw puzzle of coffee shops you walk down into and bookstores you walk straight into.
The street is also about to get its first school. Blooming Prep, a Reggio Emilia-inspired program making its debut, signed a nine-year sublease for 168 Montague Street, in the space that used to be a CVS, according to Commercial Observer's reporting on the deal.
The Tower Rising at the Gateway
The most visible sign of confidence in this stretch isn't a restaurant. It's One Montague Place, a 50-story, 672-foot tower that broke ground this year at 205 Montague Street, right where Brooklyn Heights meets Downtown Brooklyn. The project will carry 46 condominiums starting around $5.9 million, 90 rental units, roughly 40,000 square feet of retail, and an amenity package that includes a jazz club, according to reporting on the groundbreaking. Sales are expected to launch in 2027, with completion slated for 2029. If it opens as planned, it will rank as the third-tallest building in Brooklyn, behind only Brooklyn Tower and Brooklyn Point.
For residents, the practical effect this fall is simple: expect construction fencing and noise at the plaza end of Montague Street for the next few years, on a site that once held the Brooklyn Dodgers' front office.
Two Ends of the Same Walk
Put the two threads side by side and a pattern shows up that neither one reveals alone. DUMBO's waterfront, built for visitors for a decade, is now adding the kind of restaurant and retail names that a resident plans a Tuesday night around instead of a tourist detour. Montague Street, which spent years watching shoppers drive to Court and Smith Streets instead, is filling back in with a bookstore-adjacent bakery, a new school, and a supertall condo tower rising at its edge. Neither transition finished this year. Both are far enough along that anyone walking between the two this fall will notice the difference from a year ago.
If you already call this stretch of Brooklyn home, the useful takeaway is less about any single opening and more about direction: two very different commercial strips, a few blocks apart, are both trending toward more choices within walking distance rather than fewer. For a longer look at what makes this part of the borough distinct, the Limitless LMK team keeps a running neighborhood guide to Brooklyn with more on how these blocks continue to change.
