Walk the stretch of Old Northern Boulevard between the harbor and the village hall this August and you'll notice something that doesn't show up in any single headline: the street is changing at two completely different speeds, and residents are watching both happen at once.
On one end, a restaurant space can turn over in about two months. On the other, a 328-year-old building has been waiting more than half a century just to look like itself again. Both are happening on the same short run of pavement, and understanding why tells you more about how Roslyn actually works than any single "what's new" list could.
The Speed of a New Restaurant on Old Northern Boulevard
Griffin Kitchen & Bar is the clearest example of how fast this corridor can move. Chef and owner Pasquale Abbatiello presented his concept to the Village of Roslyn Board of Trustees at a February 17, 2026 meeting, describing a farm-to-table restaurant built around seasonal, locally sourced ingredients and an elevated brunch. The board approved his application that night, and by mid-April, Griffin had opened at 1512 and 1514 Old Northern Boulevard, the former home of Limani Mezze, with a menu that runs from buttermilk biscuits and mussels a la plancha to braised short ribs and dry-aged steaks. From pitch to plates in under two months.
Griffin wasn't alone this spring. In May, KuKu Korean Cuisine opened its first Long Island location a short distance away in Roslyn Heights, at 96 Mineola Avenue. The Queens-based restaurant is co-owned by James Chen and chef Chris Pak, and Chen has said the move reflects his own interest in reinvesting in the community where he now lives. It's a different address and technically a different hamlet than the incorporated Village of Roslyn, but it's the same food-forward momentum spreading outward from downtown.
A few other names worth knowing if you haven't already run into them:
- Pietro's, an Italian restaurant that opened after a stretch of anticipation, drawing early reviews that ranged from enthusiastic to skeptical, the usual pattern for a new kitchen finding its footing.
- Felice, already established in the village, was named one of Newsday's top Italian restaurants on Long Island for 2026, a distinction that puts a Roslyn kitchen in the same conversation as restaurants across the entire island.
- The village's longtime movie theater, meanwhile, is not reopening as a theater. Newsday reported on January 27, 2026, that the former Roslyn Cinema is being converted into retail space for lease, one more example of storefronts here changing purpose rather than just changing hands.
None of this is unusual for a small downtown with foot traffic and a captive dinner crowd. Restaurants open, restaurants close, retail repositions. What makes it worth naming specifically is what's happening further down that exact same street.
The Slow Return of a 300-Year-Old Landmark
The Roslyn Grist Mill sits at the head of Hempstead Harbor, right on Old Northern Boulevard, and it has been closed to the public since 1974. That's 52 years. The mill dates to 1698, when John Robeson was granted permission to build a grist and fulling mill on the site, and it went on to serve as the working economic center of the village for more than 150 years before later becoming a tea house and tourist stop from 1920 until its 1974 closure. It's listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it's one of the few surviving Dutch-framed watermills left in the New York metropolitan area.
Nassau County took ownership in 1976. Restoration plans stalled for the next 42 years. It wasn't until the Roslyn Landmark Society stepped in to take on the project directly that the mill started moving toward a second life, and even then, on a timeline measured in years, not weeks. Here's roughly how that's unfolded:
- July 2023 – The restored structure was lowered onto a new foundation, a milestone Newsday covered at the time.
- 2023 to 2024 – Restored 1700s timber columns and posts were reinstalled, rebuilding the mill's original frame piece by piece.
- November 2025 – A new cedar shingle roof was completed, restoring the building's historic silhouette for the first time in decades.
- January 2026 – Sample siding went up on the western exterior, giving the Landmark Society and the public an early look at how the finished building would read.
- Most recently – Siding on the west side was completed, window framing was finished, and work on the north side was underway, with the east side next in line.
Project Director Jennifer Lister has said the team hopes to move into the mill's third restoration phase by fall 2026, with full completion still years out. Funding has come from a patchwork of sources: Nassau County's capital plan, New York State grants including a $675,000 award from the state's Environmental Protection Fund, the federal Save America's Treasures program, and private donations. On April 24, 2026, County Executive Bruce Blakeman and Comptroller Elaine Phillips delivered a second $1 million installment of a $2 million county commitment, funding that Howard Kroplick, co-president of the Roslyn Landmark Society, said would let the team finish the siding, windows, and doors so that
"it's going to look like the grist mill looked in the 1700s."
That's the timeline. A restaurant application goes from a February board meeting to an open dining room by April. A landmark building goes from a 2023 foundation to a 2026 window frame, with completion still described in terms of years rather than months.
Two Clocks, One Street
This is the part that doesn't make it into the typical roundup: Old Northern Boulevard isn't one story, it's two stories running at different rates, and living here means you get to watch both.
The fast clock is the one that rewards paying attention right now. Reservations at Griffin fill up on weekends. Felice's Newsday recognition means the wait for a table isn't getting shorter. Earlier this month, on August 4, the Landmark Society hosted its Dancing on the Docks evening down by the harbor, the kind of event that exists because there's now enough of a food and gathering scene in the village to support it. The Landmark Society's Taste of Roslyn, presented by Rallye Motor Company, draws on that same restaurant energy for a single afternoon each year. These are events built around a dining scene that can reinvent itself inside a single season.
The slow clock is the one that rewards patience, and it's the one that actually explains why the fast clock works the way it does. A mill that's taken years of restoration just to get its siding right isn't an outlier on this street, it's the anchor. The reason a new restaurant opening at 1512 Old Northern Boulevard feels like news, rather than just another storefront change, is that it's happening in a village that has spent that same stretch of years fighting to keep its oldest building from disappearing. The churn means something because the permanence is visibly, publicly, expensively being protected further along the same street.
If you live in Roslyn, you don't need a real estate agent to tell you where to eat this month or when the mill's east side siding goes up. But you might not have connected why both things feel like they belong to the same place. The short answer is that they do. Fast food scenes need slow landmarks to feel like more than turnover. Slow landmarks need fast, visible life around them to stay worth saving. Old Northern Boulevard has both, on the same street, right now.
If you're the kind of person who tracks what opens and what gets restored in your own village because it tells you something about where you live, you're exactly who this was written for.
For more on what's happening in Roslyn and across the North Shore, or if you'd ever like to talk through what a home here is actually worth in a market that moves at its own pace, Karen Sharf would love to hear from you. Let's Connect.
