For Friday, August 7, the scene was set: music at the foot of the pier, glasses clinking from the dining room two floors up, and somewhere behind you a family packing up the last of a farmers market haul from three blocks inland. None of that would have sounded the same twelve months ago. For most of last year, one of those three things simply was not happening at the pier at all.
That is the actual story of the Yonkers waterfront this month. It is not that the neighborhood suddenly discovered summer. It is that two separate calendars, a free concert series and a full-service restaurant, were scheduled to overlap at the same address on August 7, for the first time since the pier's marquee tenant went dark.
The Pier Ran One Program At A Time For Years
The building at 71 Water Grant Street has always done two jobs. The ground level is public waterfront space tied to the historic Yonkers Recreational Pier, the only turn-of-the-20th-century pier still in active use on the Hudson. The upper level has housed a destination restaurant since the pier's restoration, most recently X2O Xaviars on the Hudson, which closed on September 29, 2024. The dining room sat empty for more than a year before The Sea Fire Grill, a project from the Benjamin Restaurant Group, officially opened there on October 8, 2025.
Meanwhile, the free Yonkers Waterfront Live concert series kept its own schedule at the same building, but not always on the pier itself. A city notice from last summer relocated two dates, including one on August 14, to a spot in front of the Science Barge at 99 Dock Street, a few hundred feet up the waterfront. Whether that move was tied to pier construction or logistics, the effect was the same: the music and the dinner were not reliably happening in the same place at the same time.
This Summer, The Concert And Restaurant Were Set To Share The Address
That changed this summer. The Yonkers Waterfront Live series was scheduled for 71 Water Grant Street on Friday, August 7, with doors at 6:30 p.m.; the restaurant upstairs was open for dinner. Executive Chef Arturo McLeod's menu leans into contemporary American seafood, chilled whole lobster, Spanish octopus, roasted Nova Scotia halibut, alongside a raw bar and caviar service, plus dry-aged steaks and pasta for anyone who came for the view rather than the shellfish.
It is worth being precise about what reopened and what did not. The restaurant upstairs is running a full summer for the first time. The ground-floor Recreational Pier, the actual public dock and pavilion, is a separate piece of city infrastructure, and the city's own page for it still carries a construction notice stating no permits are being issued until further notice. So the plan for Friday, August 7, was dinner with a view and music down the block, not necessarily a stroll out onto the dock itself.
"This five-star premiere, family-owned restaurant will attract residents and foodies from across the region, showcasing our city's exceptional waterfront and views," Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano said when The Sea Fire Grill opened last October.
Three Blocks Away, Friday Runs A Second Program Entirely
If the pier is where Friday night happens, Van der Donck Park is where Friday afternoon happens, and the two could not feel more different. The park sits over the daylighted Saw Mill River, a stretch of urban waterway that spent most of the 20th century buried under a parking lot before the city uncovered it at Larkin Plaza. From June through the end of October, a farmers market runs there every Friday from noon to 5 p.m., with families feeding ducks and watching for eels in the restored channel while commuters cut through on their way to and from the Metro-North station across the street.
The contrast is the point. One address runs a quiet daytime market built around families and errands. Another, three blocks away, runs an evening built around dinner reservations and a concert calendar. Both happen on the same day of the week, and neither one used to have much company.
More People Are Actually Down There To Notice
Part of why this Friday pattern reads differently this year is that more people live close enough to walk to it. Sawyer Place, a 435-unit development from RXR at Larkin Plaza, has been leasing steadily since it opened, with a rooftop lounge, movie theater, and a fitness club built into the building itself. A leasing representative for the property described it as one of the most sought-after rental buildings in downtown Yonkers, drawing residents who want the walk-to-everything version of the waterfront.
A few blocks south, Extell's Hudson Piers project opened its third phase, Pier III, this spring, adding 176 more rental units with monthly rents starting around $2,300. Pier III is one piece of a much larger plan, a 20-acre, roughly $585 million buildout expected to bring close to 1,400 residences to the waterfront across six buildings once every phase is complete. That is a meaningful jump in the number of people who can walk to the pier on a Friday rather than drive and hunt for parking, and it helps explain why a concert that used to draw a modest crowd now shares the block with a full dining room.
If You Want More Than One Friday This Month
The pier is not the only thing worth building an evening around this August. A few other dates are worth knowing if you are planning more than one night out:
- Yonkers Brewing Co. hosts a Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks tribute called Night of Nicks on Friday, August 21.
- Untermyer Gardens Conservancy runs a Sunset Tour on Thursday, August 13, and the Minnie Untermyer Series continues with the Victor LaGamma Jazz Quartet on Sunday, August 16.
None of these compete with the pier's Friday program so much as they extend it. A Thursday sunset at Untermyer and a Friday dinner on the water make for a fuller week than either one alone.
A Practical August Friday
If you are building a single evening around all of this, the geography actually cooperates:
- Catch the farmers market at Van der Donck Park before 5 p.m., when the Friday vendors close up.
- Walk or drive the short distance to Water Grant Street.
- Grab a table at The Sea Fire Grill for dinner with a view.
- If the crowd thins out early, Yonkers Brewing Co. is close enough for a nightcap, especially on the Fridays it has its own live act booked.
Why This Matters If You Already Live Here
The headline fact is simple enough. A restaurant reopened. A concert series returned. But the more useful fact is the timing. While the restaurant was closed, the concert series kept its own schedule, sometimes at a different location. This is the first summer the two were scheduled together, in the same building, on the same night, with enough new residents within walking distance to fill both. That is not a one-time coincidence of scheduling. It is what a waterfront looks like once the buildings behind it finish catching up to the plans that were drawn for it years ago. Expect the Friday pattern to hold, and probably to get busier before it gets quieter.
If you have been thinking about what a home near this stretch of the waterfront is actually worth, or what a move within Yonkers might look like given how much has changed down here, the team at Gino Bello Homes knows this neighborhood block by block. Reach out any time for a free home valuation and market consultation.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
