For four years, the building next to the Newton Centre T stop sat empty. Not neglected exactly. The brick held its shape, the windows stayed intact, and every so often a sign would appear in the window promising something was coming. But nothing did, and anyone who walks the Green regularly got used to treating it as scenery rather than a destination. That changes this month. Lockheart, the Wellesley restaurant known for tacos and craft cocktails, is opening its first location outside its home town inside that same depot at 70 Union Street, and the path to get there says more about how Newton Centre actually works than the opening itself does.
The building is not an ordinary storefront. It went up in 1891, designed by the successor firm to H.H. Richardson after Richardson died in 1886 with the plans still in progress, and it belongs to the Newton Railroad Stations Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976. Before this year it had cycled through a sales training agency, a travel school, a coffee shop, a Coffee Connection, and then a Starbucks that closed in 2008. A restaurant took the space in 2010 and ran until 2022, when the last tenant, Jamie's on Union, closed its doors. That is the four-year gap residents have been walking past ever since.
A landmark is not a shell
Here is the detail that explains the delay. According to city permit records reported by Fig City News, the buildout at 70 Union Street included a demolition permit filed in January 2024, a restaurant fit-out running roughly $1.2 million starting that March, and a fire-protection system acceptance test completed in June 2026, typically one of the final steps before a space can open to the public. Lockheart also filed for its liquor, common victualler, and entertainment licenses in April 2026. Add it up and you get more than two years between the first permit and the doors opening, on a building that had already sat vacant for two years before that.
That is not how most Newton Centre storefronts turn over. A former Walgreens becomes Newton Asian Mart. A vacated Bagel Table becomes Madras Dosa Co. Amarin of Thailand closed its Wellesley location in July 2025 after nearly four decades there and reopened at 313 Walnut Street in Newtonville by January 9, 2026, taking over a plain commercial space that had recently held LeDu Thai Eatery. Six months, start to finish, for a business moving its entire operation to a new town. Compare that to two and a half years for a single restaurant to open inside a building it didn't need to relocate a mile to reach.
The difference is the building itself. A 135-year-old structure inside a federally recognized historic district does not get gutted and rewired the way a strip-mall unit does. Every structural change gets weighed against what the building is allowed to keep. That is not a complaint about red tape. It is the reason the depot still looks like a depot, and it is worth understanding if you have ever wondered why some Newton Centre storefronts turn over in a season while others sit dark for years.
The operator knew the block
One more piece of this is worth knowing, because it is easy to miss in the permit filings. Derek Brady, the founder of the Wellesley Lockheart and the property contact listed on the Newton fire-safety filing, previously managed the Union Street Restaurant a few doors down in Newton Centre's Piccadilly Square, a business that closed in 2023. This is not an out-of-town operator betting on an unfamiliar market. It is someone who already worked this exact stretch of Union Street, watched the depot sit empty from the inside of a nearby storefront, and decided the address was worth a seven-figure commitment once the opportunity came around. Plans on file with the city describe seating for roughly 86 people inside and another 9 on a patio, along with a takeout window, which would make it the kind of place you can grab from on the way to the T rather than only a sit-down destination.
What else changed around the Green this year
The depot is the headline, but it is not the only shift on this block. Fig City News, which tracks Newton's restaurant scene closely, counted at least 12 openings and reopenings against nine closings across the city this year, with the majority of new arrivals being independent, single-location businesses rather than chains. Locally, the former Walgreens space in Newton Centre now houses Newton Asian Mart, which received its temporary certificate of occupancy this year after a stop-work order briefly paused construction in late April. Even a straightforward retail conversion in a modern shell hit its own snag before opening. The depot's two-and-a-half-year timeline looks less unusual once you see that friction shows up even in buildings without a National Register listing attached to them.
None of this changes what the Green has offered for years. The farmers market still sets up on Union Street through the season. The Bowl still hosts its summer concert series before the weather turns. What has changed is the built environment around those fixtures. A building that anchored the corner for over a century, then sat quiet for four years, now has a tenant who already knew the neighborhood before he signed the lease.
Why the four years mattered
It would be easy to read this as a story about a restaurant opening. The more accurate read is that Newton Centre's most visible vacancy just got filled by the kind of buildout that only makes financial sense for someone who intends to stay a long time. A $1.2 million investment in a fixed historic structure is not a bet you make if you are testing a concept. It is a bet you make when you already know the foot traffic from the T stop, the rhythm of the farmers market crowd, and the fact that Piccadilly Square empties out by early evening on a weeknight. Brady had that knowledge before he filed the first permit.
That is the pattern worth watching, not just at 70 Union Street but anywhere in Newton where an old building sits vacant longer than the market around it would predict. The delay is not a sign the address isn't wanted. Often it is a sign that the only businesses willing to take it on are the ones with enough capital and enough local history to make the timeline work. When one of them finally does, the building tends to stay occupied for a long stretch afterward, because nobody spends two and a half years and seven figures on a space they plan to leave quickly.
Walk past the Green this fall and the depot will look, for the first time since 2022, like it is doing what it was built to do. That took longer than almost anything else on the block. It is also probably why the building is still standing the way it always has.
If you're curious about what a shift like this can mean for property values or timing on a nearby street, that's a conversation worth having directly. Sheri Flagler has spent years watching how Newton's village centers change block by block, and the Let's Connect page is the place to start that conversation.
