Englewood This Summer: How Depot Square, Palisade Avenue, and Flat Rock Brook Became One Weekend
July 23, 2026
July 23, 2026
Drive through Englewood in August and it looks like four different towns stacked on top of each other. A theater crowd walking to their cars on Dean Street. A farmers market winding down at Demarest Avenue. A dinner line outside a new BYOB on Palisade. Hikers coming off the trails on the western slope of the Palisades. Four scenes, four schedules, four zip-code-worth of activity in a town that measures barely five square miles.
If you already live here, you know these are not separate places. They are one loop, tightened this year by two openings and the summer stage at bergenPAC. Here is how the loop actually runs.
The Englewood Farmers Market runs at Depot Square Park, at the corner of North Van Brunt Street and Demarest Avenue, Fridays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., rain or shine, with free parking in Lot B. That is a longer window than most Bergen County markets, which usually shut by 2 or 3 p.m., and the late close is the reason the market functions as a workday endpoint rather than a Saturday errand. You can pick up dinner produce on your way home from the train.
The vendor mix leans toward what you would actually cook that night. Fresh local produce, eggs, honey, gluten-free baked goods, ice cream, and artisan products from a lineup of local farms and specialty vendors is the working description. If you time it around 5 p.m., you catch the second wind, when the after-work crowd shows up and the market's proximity to the Van Brunt restaurant corridor starts to matter.
Two openings this year changed the density of the downtown grid.
La Cuchara opened in January 2026 at 21 East Palisade Avenue as a Spanish BYOB, with paellas and shared-plate service as the anchor. It sits inside the same short walk that includes the market, the theater, and the parking garage at Dean and Palisade. In a downtown where most sit-down dinner spots have been in place for years, the arrival of a new BYOB is the kind of change residents notice within a week.
The second opening runs on a different clock. Habit Burger & Grill opened at 29 Nathaniel Place in February 2026, its 18th New Jersey outpost, joining locations in Fair Lawn, River Edge, and Teterboro. That address puts a quick-service option two blocks off the theater side of downtown, which matters more than the burgers themselves. It fills a gap in the pre-show window between 5:30 and 7 p.m. that used to send families to Fort Lee or Teaneck.
Neither opening reinvents the downtown. They tighten a walkable inventory that already existed.
Bergen Performing Arts Center, founded in 2003, sits at 30 North Van Brunt Street, which is the same street as Depot Square, two blocks north. That geographic fact does more work than any programming note. When you look at the summer 2026 calendar, the venue is running a rock show on Saturday July 25, blues on Tuesday August 4, rock on Thursday August 6, reggae on Friday August 7, and rock again on Saturday August 8, then rolling into a jazz and comedy stretch in September. Five bookings across two weeks in early August is a heavy summer cadence for a house this size.
The anchor event for residents with kids is not on the touring calendar. The Performing Arts School's Summer Theater Program presents Annie from July 31 through August 2, 2026, celebrating the program's 15th anniversary, with performances Friday July 31 at 7 p.m., Saturday August 1 at 3 p.m., and Sunday August 2 at 3 p.m.. The alumni list gives the program its weight. Notable alumni include Golden Globe winner Rachel Zegler, Broadway performer Vince Ermita, Levi Blaise Coleman, currently on a national tour of Beauty and the Beast, and Felice Kakaletris, who was featured as an orphan in NBC's televised production of Annie.
Parking is the part that trips up newcomers and reassures anyone who has done it before. Parking is in the municipal lot across the railroad tracks, where meters are free after 6 p.m., or the multi-level garage at the corner of Dean and Palisade Avenue one block south of the theater. That garage is the same one you would use for dinner at La Cuchara. One meter fee, two destinations.
The fourth anchor sits west of everything else. Flat Rock Brook is a 150-acre nature preserve and environmental education center in Englewood, just two miles from the George Washington Bridge, with the trailhead at 443 Van Nostrand Avenue. It is one of the last remnants of the Palisades Forest, and it operates on a scale that surprises people who have only driven past the sign on Jones Road.
A 3.6-mile network of self-guiding trails leads to a cascading stream, wetlands, pond, wildflower meadows, quarry cliffs, and woodlands. Trails and picnic area are free and open to the public 365 days a year from dawn to dusk. The raptor aviary near the nature center is the detail most first-time visitors miss on the map. Completed in 2013, the aviary houses five birds of prey, and it is the closest thing to a live-animal exhibit inside city limits.
A few practical rules matter before you go:
The summer camp calendar itself is worth knowing because it drives morning traffic on Van Nostrand. Coyote Kids Camp Week Four, STEM in the Forest, ran July 20 to July 24, 2026, for ages 8 to 10, followed by an Outdoor Explorer week July 27 to July 31 and a Jersey Jones Archeology Base Camp August 3 to August 7. If you are trying to hike on a weekday morning, that is the reason the lot is busy at 8:30 a.m.
The loop, played out over a typical August weekend, looks like this.
Two of those four stops start from the same parking garage. Two of the four are free. All four are inside a 2-mile triangle drawn between Van Brunt Street, Palisade Avenue, and Van Nostrand Avenue.
Every summer in Englewood has had a farmers market, a theater, and a preserve. What changed in 2026 is the middle of the walk. La Cuchara added a sit-down dinner option to the market end of Van Brunt in January. Habit Burger added a quick-service option to the theater end in February. The result is that the two-block gap between Depot Square and bergenPAC now has enough eating options to keep a family from driving twice on the same night.
Add the summer stage at bergenPAC, which is running performances from artists including Warrant, Swingtime Bigband, and Little Feat across the 2026 to 2027 season, and the calendar side of the loop takes care of itself. What residents actually do with the loop is the local knowledge. It is not on the calendar page.
If you are thinking about the next stage of your life in Englewood, whether that means a different house in the same school zone or a first look at what your current home would trade for in this market, Stacy Esser Group is based in Bergen County and works this corridor closely. Schedule a meeting today to talk through what your options look like without committing to a listing conversation.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
That’s the foundation of our Buyer Upside Method™. Because the goal isn’t just to buy a home
If you are considering a move, or simply want clarity on where you stand, start with a real strategy.
The Buyers Who Are Winning Right Now Aren’t Just Looking for A House They Love.
SEG is a high performing Bergen County luxury real estate team that blends relationship driven service, cutting edge marketing, and strategic negotiation to consistently outperform traditional agents.