Three business changes have hit the same four blocks around the Grove Street PATH station this year, and if you only heard about them one at a time, you'd file them under ordinary churn. A bar closes. A pub opens. A basement gets a liquor license. That's just what happens in a neighborhood with this much foot traffic.
But look at what actually closed, what actually opened, and when each one operates, and a different pattern shows up. Nobody built this on purpose. The corridor around Newark Avenue and Grove Street didn't have a consistent morning anchor, didn't have a bar open every single day, and didn't have a late-night option with real reservations. Now it has all three, and they arrived close enough together that most residents haven't clocked the sequence.
What closed, and what's replacing it
Frankie ran at 264 Grove Street for nine years, opening in 2017 as an Australian-inspired bar and restaurant built around natural wines and vinyl nights. The owners, Rowen McDermott and Rebecca Johnson, announced the closure in February and shut the doors that March. Taking over the space: Cheech's Bagels, a bagel shop founded by lifelong friends John Ballan and Gianluca Fernicola, who have lived in Jersey City for seven years. Cheech's already runs a location a few blocks away at 176 Erie Street, opened in May 2025, and named for John's chihuahua.
This isn't a bagel shop parachuting into a neighborhood it doesn't know. It's an existing local operator doubling its footprint on the same short stretch of streets. And it's swapping a dinner-and-drinks room for a breakfast counter, which matters more than it sounds like it should.
What opened first: an Irish dive two doors from the PATH plaza
Before Frankie closed, Café Coretto had already been replaced. The event space at 123 Newark Avenue, which hosted comedy nights and jazz sets under the ownership of neighboring restaurant Roman Nose, gave way to Dagda Irish Prochóg. Co-owner Ben Prior, a Hudson County resident of about 17 years, is a familiar face from tending bar at Wilton House in Hoboken. The concept is a green-walled dive with a pool table, darts, and a traditional Irish snug tucked at the end of the bar. Prior described the goal as blending "a good, solid, warm, wooden, Irish bar with a neighborhood dive feel."
What matters for the daily rhythm of the block: Dagda is open every day of the week starting at 4 in the afternoon, with last call pushed to 3 a.m. on Fridays. That's a bar the corridor didn't have before, one that opens rain or shine, seven days a week, at the exact hour the workday winds down.
What opened in April: a reservation room under a sister restaurant
The third piece sits at 8 Erie Street, a short walk from both the plaza and the PATH turnstiles. San Patricios, an Irish and Mexican cantina from the Dead Rabbit Group, opened there in fall 2025. This past spring, the same team opened The Life of Reilly in the basement below it, a speakeasy built around vaudeville staging and Irish-American history, with vintage posters sourced from Dublin's Abbey Theatre.
The Life of Reilly runs Wednesday and Thursday from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m., and Friday and Saturday from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. It's closed Sunday through Tuesday. Walk-ins are technically welcome, but the room is built for a booked table on Resy, not a spontaneous stop after work.
The part that doesn't show up if you look at one opening at a time
Line these up against the one fixture that predates all three: the Historic Downtown Jersey City Farmers Market, which has run at the Grove Street PATH Plaza for years and operates Mondays and Thursdays from 3 to 7 p.m. through December 21. That's the corridor's oldest anchor, and it only covers two afternoons a week.
Put the schedule side by side and the gaps the new businesses filled become obvious.
| Day | Farmers Market | Dagda | The Life of Reilly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 3–7 p.m. | 4 p.m. onward | closed |
| Tuesday | closed | 4 p.m. onward | closed |
| Wednesday | closed | 4 p.m. onward | 6 p.m.–1 a.m. |
| Thursday | 3–7 p.m. | 4 p.m. onward | 6 p.m.–1 a.m. |
| Friday | closed | 4 p.m.–3 a.m. | 6 p.m.–2 a.m. |
| Saturday | closed | 4 p.m. onward | 6 p.m.–2 a.m. |
| Sunday | closed | 4 p.m. onward | closed |
Before this year, a resident walking out of the Grove Street PATH station on a Tuesday evening had the market's off day, no guaranteed bar, and a shuttered event space that only came alive when it had a private booking. Now Dagda is open on a Tuesday at 4 p.m. no matter what. On the two nights the market runs, its 7 p.m. close hands off almost exactly to Dagda's open bar and, on Thursdays, to The Life of Reilly's 6 p.m. start upstairs at San Patricios. And every morning of the week, Cheech's Bagels now occupies the exact address where a dinner bar used to sit dark until happy hour.
None of the three owners coordinated with each other. Dagda and Cheech's Bagels didn't open because The Life of Reilly did. But the corridor's daypart coverage went from spotty to close to continuous inside a single calendar year, and that's the kind of change that shows up in how a block feels to live near, not in any single headline about a new restaurant.
Why the plaza was already primed for this
The reason three separate operators bet on this same four-block stretch isn't a mystery. The Newark Avenue Pedestrian Plaza has been drawing crowds long before any of these businesses existed, and it still does. Jersey City Pride took over the plaza and extended down Newark Avenue from Grove Street to Jersey Avenue on August 22, pulling a regional crowd that arrives two PATH stops from Manhattan and leaves through the same plaza the farmers market sets up in twice a week. That kind of standing foot traffic is exactly what makes a bagel counter, a dive bar, and a reservation-only lounge all viable on the same short run of storefronts at the same time.
What this actually changes if you already live here
If your routine used to be market day, then figure out dinner somewhere else, then home, the math is different now. A Thursday can run market at 4, dinner at San Patricios by 6, and downstairs at The Life of Reilly after. A Tuesday, previously the quietest night on this stretch, now has a bar open at 4 p.m. whether or not anything else is happening. And the morning walk to the PATH station, which used to pass a bar with its shades still down, now passes a bagel counter that's already busy.
None of this required the neighborhood to change. It required three operators to notice the same gap in the schedule and fill three different parts of it, close enough together that the corridor's week looks nothing like it did in January.
If you're curious what a block like this is worth to live on, not just walk through, that's the kind of read The Sutherlin Group does for a living. Request a showing and we'll walk you through what's actually changing on the ground here, block by block.