Park Street Already Works as a Walking Street. The Bricks Are Catching Up.

If you want dinner on Westfield's Restaurant Row this fall, park on another street and walk in. As of early October, the city's parks and recreation director said Park Street had been closed to traffic for about four weeks. Fox59 reported that restaurants like The Italian House and Nyla's could only be reached on foot. The rebuilt street is planned around much the same arrangement, with cars parked off the block and people at tables on it.

The rebuild started with a groundbreaking on May 8 and covers Park Street between Poplar and Mill streets. For anyone who has avoided the block since spring, the questions are practical ones: who is still serving, where to leave the car, and when the fencing comes down.

The Street Closed to Cars Before It Was Finished

The original plan said Park Street would stay partly open the whole time. The city's February release promised at least one open lane and continued access to businesses. By the end of construction season, the street had closed to vehicles completely. Chris McConnell, Westfield's director of parks and recreation, put it this way in Fox59's October 1 report: "Although the road has been a mess since May, it technically has only been closed for the last four weeks."

The same report brought news that changed the block. Chiba, the sushi restaurant at 228 Park Street, closed after 10 years. In February, Chiba's owner had backed the project in the city's announcement and called it "short-term pain for long-term gain." By October, the restaurant pointed to access during construction as the reason it closed. McConnell told Fox59, "It's always unfortunate when you lose a small business. It's always unfortunate when you lose a restaurant that's been here as long as Chiba had been here."

So the walk-in version of Park Street arrived early, and it came before the pavers, parklets and lights that are meant to make walking in feel like the point.

Who Is Still Serving Behind the Fencing

In May, Mayor Scott Willis told Current that the street already had "four or five restaurants that are really thriving." Here is how the block looks heading into November, based on the most recent reporting and the businesses' own pages.

Nyla's posts its hours on its website. The Italian House lists its location as 219 Park Street in one spot on its site and 211 Park Street in another, so map the restaurant by name rather than by number.

Broad Ripple Seafood Market is the newest name on the row, and its timing stands out. It moved into the former Greek's Pizzeria building, held a soft opening May 26 and opened officially May 27, about three weeks after construction began. Owner Todd Reisenbigler told Current that parking was a challenge during construction, but he was confident in the local foot traffic. The seafood market is the only business on the block that has never had a finished street out front, so foot traffic is all it has known here.

Something Splendid's co-owner, Erynn Neal, told Fox59 how the businesses depend on each other: "When people don't come and visit any businesses around here, we're ultimately affected as well." An evening at one of these places helps the others on the block too.

Where to Leave the Car

The city's construction plan named the parking that serves the block while the street is torn up. Valet has been discontinued for the length of the project.

• The temporary lot on the west end of Park Street. This is the closest option the city listed.
• The Union garage. The first three hours are free, which covers most dinners and a drink afterward.
• On-street spaces on Mill, Jersey and Union streets. These sit around the edges of the construction zone.

Every option on that list ends with a short walk onto the block, so plan for one. Under the current setup, that walk is the only way in.

What the Walking Is Rehearsing

The mayor has been clear about what he wants Park Street to become. At the groundbreaking, Willis described it to Current this way:

"The vision is we'll have is to shut the roads down on the weekends and the evening hours where people come into the streets. You have tables set up, you can eat, you can see live bands. It will be a really cool place for people to hang out."

In an August interview with Current, he got more specific. Plans call for the brick-paved road to close to vehicles Thursday through Sunday evenings to create a pedestrian-plaza atmosphere. That report describes a plan and doesn't give closure hours or a start date, so expect those details closer to reopening.

The physical changes are what make that kind of closure practical. According to the city's project announcement, the rebuilt street will get:

1. Brick pavers and updated streetscape features, including landscaping and trees
2. Flush curbs, which improve pedestrian access and make event setup easier
3. Parklets for extra seating and gathering space
4. New decorative catenary lights strung over the street
5. Traffic reversed to run east to west instead of west to east, which cuts down on left turns downtown

Flush curbs explain the plan. A street with no step between sidewalk and roadway can switch from cars to tables in an evening without anything being torn up. For the past several weeks, the block has worked like a car-free street out of necessity. The rebuild is designed to make that setup routine.

Four Accounts of When Park Street Is Done

Ask when Park Street will be done and you'll get different answers depending on who you ask, mostly because each source means a different stage of the work.

Put together, the street could reopen around the start of December, with trees and plantings filling in through spring. The Dec. 1 date comes from Fox59's reporting, not from a city announcement. Even if it holds, the first stretch of the rebuilt Park Street would fall in winter, so the Thursday-through-Sunday table scene the mayor describes is realistically a 2027 picture.

What Comes After the Bricks

The street is the first piece of a longer plan for this corner of downtown, and the next pieces are already on file.

At 227 Park Street, the city's development tracker lists a 4,000-square-foot conversion of an existing building into a sit-down restaurant by Tom and Anthony Lazzara. As of the city's October 6 update, construction had not started. The project was approved September 3, 2024, and a building permit was issued March 7, 2025. Current separately reported a restaurant planned for the northwest corner of Park and Mill streets.

On the west side of Park Street near Poplar, housing projects by developer Old Town have been approved for what is now a gravel lot. A courtyard planned between the two buildings would connect to the Midland Trace Trail. The city's release describes a later phase that adds a plaza linking Park Street to that trail, plus a parking garage at Park and Poplar streets. Current reported that the Park and Poplar agreement calls for a $22 million, 523-space garage and a pedestrian plaza paid for by the city, with the project scheduled for completion in 2028.

That garage settles the parking question for the long term. Today's routine of parking a block away and walking in is close to how the finished district is meant to run. The garage sits at the end of the street, the trail plaza ties in the Midland Trace, and Park Street stays open for tables. Willis summed up the city's thinking to Current: "The private sector led the way, which is what you want, and now the government's going to come alongside and add some amenities to really build out this space."

For now, that means parking in The Union garage or on Jersey Street, walking past the fencing, and eating at one of the restaurants that stayed open through the construction.

If you own a home near downtown Westfield and want to know how Park Street, the Park and Poplar garage and the new restaurant sites could affect your street over the next few years, The Carrie Holle Group follows these projects closely. Schedule a Personal Market Consultation, and we'll go through what is approved, what is under construction and what it means for your home.