On the morning of September 9, a ribbon-cutting drew town officials, Chamber of Commerce staff, and a line of shoppers to 21 Glenville Street. DeCicco & Sons had finally opened its doors at 7:30 a.m., ending a vacancy that had defined the neighborhood's western edge for more than three years. For anyone who lives along the Byram River in Glenville, the return of a full-service grocery store to that address is the kind of news that reorganizes a week: no more driving into central Greenwich or across the state line just to restock a refrigerator.
But the more interesting story isn't that Glenville got its supermarket back. It's who came to fill the space, and what that choice says about which side of the map this neighborhood actually belongs to.
The Gap Nobody Filled Right Away
Stop & Shop closed its Glen Ridge Road location on June 15, 2023, after a spokesperson said the store "was not meeting financial expectations." Retail observers at the time pointed to a specific culprit: a Wegmans that had opened in Harrison, New York, in 2020 and pulled shoppers from communities on both sides of the state line, Glenville included. The closure hit the small shopping plaza hard. At Val's Fine Wines and Liquors, next door at that same 21 Glenville Street address, manager Johnny Cue told reporters at the time that the liquor store's own foot traffic depended on grocery customers wandering over.
"We're keeping our fingers crossed. Business is going to be a lot slower until someone moves in."
That wait ran long. First Selectman Fred Camillo publicly floated names as the search dragged on, and just as publicly ruled some out. He doubted Aldi was the right fit for the site. He said he'd heard no interest from Amazon Fresh. Whole Foods already had a location in downtown Greenwich and another coming to Stamford, so a third seemed unlikely. The Planning & Zoning Commission didn't approve a lease with DeCicco & Sons until October 2024, and the store didn't actually open for nearly two years after that approval. Even a month out, the date wasn't locked in. In August 2026, Camillo told the Board of Selectmen the store was still waiting on a permit tied to a retaining wall at the back of the property. Add it up and Glenville went without a supermarket for over three years, longer than a typical elementary school career.
Why A Family Grocer From Pelham, Not A Bigger Name
Here's the detail that changes how you read the whole saga. DeCicco & Sons isn't a chain expanding into a new market the way Whole Foods or Wegmans would. The family's grocery roots trace back to a store the DeCiccos opened in the Bronx in 1973, and the current company, built almost entirely around Westchester and Putnam counties in New York, has never operated a single store outside New York in more than fifty years of that family history. Glenville is the twelfth DeCicco's location overall and the very first across the state line.
That's not an incidental fact. It means the business filling Glenville's biggest retail vacancy in years didn't arrive because Greenwich was the target market. It arrived because Glenville sits close enough to the Pelham-based chain's existing Westchester footprint that crossing into Connecticut barely registered as a stretch. CEO John DeCicco Jr. said as much at the opening, calling Glenville "a close-knit community that values quality, local businesses and personal service." That's a fair description of the neighborhood, but it's also, almost word for word, a description of the towns DeCicco's already serves a few miles up the road.
The same logic explains why the town's wish list of bigger names never landed. Aldi, Amazon Fresh, and a second Whole Foods all have reasons to prioritize larger or higher-traffic sites elsewhere. A 20,000-square-foot store in a mill village bordering New York was never going to be their first call. It was, however, exactly the kind of infill move a Westchester-scale grocer looking for its next storefront would make without much hesitation.
A Timeline Worth Having In One Place
| Date | What Happened |
|---|---|
| April 2023 | Stop & Shop announces it will not renew its lease at 11 Glen Ridge Road |
| June 15, 2023 | Stop & Shop closes; about 60 employees affected |
| October 2024 | Greenwich Planning & Zoning Commission approves DeCicco & Sons lease and site plan |
| May 2026 | DeCicco & Sons holds weekly job fairs at the Glenville site, opening date still unset |
| August 2026 | Store still awaiting final permits; First Selectman Fred Camillo cites a retaining-wall issue |
| September 9, 2026 | DeCicco & Sons opens its first Connecticut store, its twelfth overall |
The gap between closure and reopening ran roughly three years and three months, long enough that an entire cohort of Glenville Elementary students grew up without a grocery store within walking distance of home.
What Actually Changes On The Errand Loop
The new store keeps longer hours than its predecessor, open until 8:30 p.m. on weeknights and Saturdays and 7:30 p.m. on Sundays, which matters for anyone whose commute back from the city or from the office doesn't end until well past six. It's also bringing a school rebate program to Greenwich, letting everyday grocery purchases route a portion of spending back to local schools, a model the company has run for years in its Westchester locations.
For Val's Fine Wines, the practical effect should be the one Johnny Cue was hoping for three years ago: a grocery neighbor that puts people back on that sidewalk. The plaza's other longtime tenants, including a photo shop that weathered the empty years, get the same lift.
Meanwhile, Three Blocks Away, A Different Kind Of Turnover
Glenville's second running story this year is happening at The Mill, the converted 1881 felt factory that sits beside the Byram River's waterfall a short walk from the grocery plaza. The waterfront dining room there has changed hands more than once since the pandemic. Centro at the Mill, an Italian restaurant many longtime residents had visited for two decades, closed in 2020. Restaurateur Ron Rosa, who had built a career in Manhattan at Ecco and Campagnola before opening Polpo in Greenwich, took over the space and introduced The Lion, a concept that carried an African-safari theme and an expanded bar built around that waterfall-facing terrace. That room later operated as Il Leone and, most recently, The Lion Brasserie, before this July, when it reopened again as Greenwich Grill, an American grill concept with a menu built around a 14-ounce New York strip, grilled Atlantic salmon, and a cocktail list that includes a gin-and-lavender London Mist alongside a habanero-tequila Tropical Heat Wave.
Three named concepts on the same waterfall view in six years is a fast turnover rate for a room with that much built-in scenery. It's also worth knowing that The Mill complex itself sold for $97.5 million in September 2025, about ten months before Greenwich Grill's arrival and right in the middle of the neighborhood's supermarket drought. New ownership, a new restaurant, and a returning grocery store all landed within about a year of each other on the same half-mile stretch of road.
Two Stories, One Pattern
Line up the grocer and the restaurant rotation side by side and a shape appears. Glenville's most recent commercial arrivals, from a family grocer headquartered in Pelham to a restaurateur who cut his teeth in Manhattan and Westchester before landing in Greenwich, keep tracing back across the state line rather than out from downtown Greenwich Avenue. That's less a coincidence than a reflection of geography. Glenville sits at Greenwich's western edge, closer to Port Chester and Rye Brook than to Tod's Point, and its retail cycle has always taken cues from what's happening on the New York side of that boundary as much as from what's happening a few miles east.
What's Already There, Now With A Full Grocery Store Attached
None of this replaces the businesses that kept Glenville functioning through the gap years. Glenville Pizza has been serving its thin-crust pies since 1976. The Country Table still handles the sandwich-and-salad lunch crowd. A short walk covers most of what a weekday actually requires:
- Glenville Pizza, a neighborhood fixture since 1976
- The Country Table, for sandwiches, salads, and baked goods
- Gville Deli, known locally for its wedges
- Popup Bagels, for New York-style bagels
- Sweet Notes, a candy and ice cream shop popular with families
- Val's Fine Wines and Liquors, back to full foot traffic now that its grocery neighbor has returned
What changed on September 9 isn't that Glenville suddenly became a place with things to do. It's that the one piece missing from an otherwise complete errand loop, a real supermarket, is back, and it came from exactly the direction the neighborhood's history would have predicted.
If you're weighing what a corner of Greenwich like Glenville actually feels like day to day, or thinking through how a neighborhood's commercial rhythm shapes the value of a home in it, that's the kind of ground-level read Nora Giovati brings to every conversation about Old Greenwich and the towns around it. Show me homes or list my property. Contact Nora today.
