Cafe Nero has opened at 28 Austin Street!
Cafe Nero opens in Newtonville
by Village 14 | Aug 24, 2020 | Newton | 10 comments
Crazy Divers: Men be like...
drivers man be like
Cafe Nero has opened at 28 Austin Street!
Crazy Divers: Men be like...
drivers man be like
…George Howell Coffee on life support.
Dang I prefer Dunkin’ Donuts
As predicted, the Austin Street project sure has destroyed the character of this neighborhood. (Insert I’m being sarcastic emoji here.)
The Austin St. project is great, the space before was an eye sore, we have now increased store frontage in a key village AND more housing stock!
But what did ruin Newtonville is the horrible butcher job that they did to the curbs, streets, and sidewalks. It looks terrible and actually looks like maybe they made a mistake in several locations (elevation, grade, and pitch).
@Dan are there going to be any trees, we ( my wife and I ) wonder?
Boy, you can sure get coffee in Newton these days!
I’m delighted by how good a neighbor Austin St. is visually, including the streetscape. Great that Caffe Nero is open.
The Caffe Nero storefront looks great. Looking forward to seeing some similarly vibrant looking storefronts pop up on Dunstan Street in my ‘hood.
Caffe Nero has outside seating and the interior has a much different vibe for when things get better and we go back to leisurely coffee breaks. Tons of great seating, couches, comfy chairs. I do hope all three coffee shops survive, they all have a different niche.
Austin Street apartments could have been better in certain ways, and I’ll have a fuller post about that another day. But all in all, I’m pretty happy about how things turned out.
As for the Newtonville streetwork, I’d say give it some time. There are a lot of tree pits and landscaping that are planned, but you can’t plant that stuff in the summer. The gravel will be bricks. There are streetlights coming in. There is more paving to be done which handles the grading issues. It is VERY much a construction site. I read the plans a few weeks ago, they are on the city website. I was impressed overall. I wish there was a few fewer parking spaces (and more pocket parks like now exist in front of a few places along Walnut), and I wish I could figure out what the plan was for the bridge over the Pike, and the alleyways to make them better lit and more decorative. But once the lights are in, the trees are planted, and the bricks are in, and the street is marked, I think it will be a great improvement.
I’m telling myself to be patient….
Of course, you can no longer get Dunks, since the outlet in Newtonville closed.
@Greg
I’m not sure why one would celebrate the arrival of an(other) international coffee chain as contributing to the ‘character’ of the neighborhood.
Hopefully we can get a big Chase Bank branch in there to bring Newtonville up to the standard character of the ‘better’ neighborhoods in Newton (where’s my sarcasm emoji?).