Fox Point's Centennial Year Isn't Why the Restaurants Are Opening
August 27, 2026
August 27, 2026
Why did a gas station on the corner of Bradley and Port Washington sit empty for twenty years, then suddenly become worth $1.4 million to renovate, in the exact same year the village turned 100?
It looks like cause and effect. A milestone year, a wave of ribbon cuttings, a village celebrating itself into new business. But that's not what happened. The timing is a coincidence. The actual mechanism is a zoning change from last year and four summers of a beer garden that quietly did the work of a market study nobody paid for.
The building at 8000 N. Port Washington Road used to be the Northpoint Service Center. It closed, and then it just sat there, empty, for roughly twenty years, on one of the more visible corners in the village. Plenty of people who live in Fox Point could tell you exactly what it looks like without being able to tell you the last time anything operated out of it.
That changes this year. New Barons Brewing Cooperative, the Bay View-based co-op brewery, is converting the site into Acronym Brewing Co., with plans to open before the end of 2026. The project calls for renovating the existing 1,700-square-foot building into production space and adding roughly 2,200 more square feet for a taproom, plus an outdoor patio. The Village Board held a public hearing on the rezoning on December 9, 2025, and New Barons received final village approval that same month.
None of that happens without a specific piece of local policy: the Port Washington Overlay Zoning District, which the Village Board adopted in early 2025 to make redevelopment along the Port Washington Road commercial corridor easier. Under the village's older rules, a property like the former Northpoint station was hard to repurpose for something like a brewery. The overlay changed that. It's the actual reason the corner is finally getting filled, not the centennial banners going up around town.
The person behind Acronym Brewing is John Degroote, the founder and CEO of New Barons, and he's also a Fox Point resident. He didn't propose a brewery on a hunch. He had four years of data.
New Barons has run the Fox Point Beer Garden in partnership with the village since 2022, first at the now-closed public pool and later at Longacre Pavilion. It started as a folding-table operation with a converted trailer and six draft lines. By the time Degroote pitched the village on Acronym, he had a track record: consistent turnout, food trucks that kept coming back, and a Friday-night crowd that showed up whether or not there was anything else to do.
"There's no fixed nightlife here, or even afternoonlife."
That's Degroote's own framing for why the North Shore needed something more permanent than a seasonal pop-up. The beer garden proved the appetite existed. The zoning overlay made it legal to build something around it. The centennial just happens to be the backdrop.
A little further down Port Washington Road, inside the Riverpoint Shopping Center, three storefronts have changed hands this year, and the pattern matches what's happening at the old gas station: long-vacant or aging spaces getting picked up now that the corridor is easier to develop.
Nino's Southern Sides, a soul food restaurant that's operated in Shorewood since 2014, opened its second location at 8775 N. Port Washington Road on April 1. The space had been sitting since Cosi, the salad chain, closed there in 2019. Nino's serves dinners built around a meat and two sides, with nearly twenty sides to choose from.
Down the row at 8617 N. Port Washington Road, Las Cazuelas Chilaquiles & Taco Bar, a family-owned restaurant out of West Allis, is opening a second location in the space that Jose's Blue Sombrero occupied for more than a decade before closing in October 2025. The menu will mirror the West Allis location, tacos, chilaquiles, tres leches, a Friday Mexican fish fry, but the Fox Point location adds something new: live music on the outdoor patio Fridays and Saturdays from 5 to 7 p.m.
And at 8687 N. Port Washington Road, in a roughly 1,400-square-foot space that used to hold a screen printing business, Donut Zone opened in mid-June, run by owner Bao Nguyen and selling donuts, kolaches, breakfast sandwiches, and coffee.
Three storefronts, three different operators, all filling spaces that had been vacant or underused. That's not a centennial effect either. It's what happens when a shopping center with foot traffic finally has turnover in a corridor the village made easier to build in.
Fox Point turned 100 in 2026, and the celebration has been spread across the calendar rather than packed into one weekend. The year started with a February gathering that included the dedication of a Centennial time capsule, and it's included a village open house with guided bus tours of historic landmarks, a Freedom 5K that routes past those same landmarks with QR codes for self-guided history along the way, and a farmers market season that opened on the same day as the village's tree-planting and plaque dedication ceremony on the boulevard of E. Community Place.
The Fox Point Farmers Market runs Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon in the North Shore Congregational Church parking lot for anyone who hasn't found it yet.
The Rock the Fox concert series at Longacre Pavilion has also doubled as a coincidental anniversary. The Fox Point Foundation, which runs the series, turns 50 this year, separate from the village's 100th. The final show of the season is the 50th Anniversary Rock the Fox on Saturday, September 19, from 6:30 to 9 p.m., featuring AM FM playing through decades of rock, with free Wisconsin Athletic Club classes beforehand for anyone who wants to stretch before standing around with a drink for three hours.
If you're tracking the New Barons beer garden at Longacre Pavilion, the remaining 2026 dates are:
The village has also said a fall showcase is still coming, without a confirmed date yet, so anyone who wants the update should sign up for Fox Point's events notification list rather than guessing.
Not everything this year is a ribbon cutting. The gravel pedestrian path that descends the bluff from Fox Lane to Beach Drive is closed indefinitely. Village engineers evaluated it and determined the path needs stabilization work before it can reopen, so if that's part of a regular walking or dog-walking route, plan around it for now.
Separately, the Beach Drive hill road and storm drainage project started July 8, 2026, and as of July 13 the pedestrian path along that stretch has been removed entirely for the duration of construction, expected to run about three months. That puts the likely reopening somewhere in the October window, though the village has said updates will be posted as the work progresses.
Neither closure is connected to the centennial or the business openings. They're just true at the same time, which is worth knowing if you're the kind of resident who plans a Saturday walk around what's actually passable.
None of this is really about Fox Point turning 100. It's about a zoning change from 2025 finally showing up in occupied storefronts, and about one resident's four-year experiment at a beer garden becoming the evidence that justified a $1.4 million bet on a corner that had been empty since most of the neighborhood's kids weren't born yet. The centennial gave the year a name. The overlay district and the Friday-night data gave it a reason.
If you're already living here, the practical version is simple: expect Port Washington Road to look different by the end of the year than it did at the start of it, plan your bluff walks around the two closures, and put September 19 on the calendar if you want to see the Foundation's 50th land on the same Longacre Pavilion stage that's hosted Rock the Fox all summer.
For anyone thinking further ahead, whether that's watching how a corridor like this one changes property values over time or just wanting a second opinion from someone who tracks the North Shore closely, Walters Realty Group is always glad to talk through what a specific block or building means for a longer-term plan. Schedule a Consultation whenever that conversation is useful.
Whether you are buying, selling, or stepping into a new chapter, Walters Realty Group delivers the expertise, strategy, and elevated service to make your move seamless from start to finish. Connect with our team today and let us guide your next move with confidence.