What's Actually Holding Up the Restaurant at Newton Centre's Old Train Station

"A few weeks, hopefully."

That is what the attorney representing Lockheart's ownership group told Fig City News in late August, when asked why the restaurant everyone in Newton Centre has been watching still had not opened. The city approved its liquor, common victualler, and entertainment licenses on June 16. Eight weeks later, the state's Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission still had not signed off, and the attorney could only promise it was coming "within a matter of days."

If you have walked past 70 Union Street this summer, you already know the strange part. The building looks done. New windows, a cleaned-up facade, a takeout window built into the side facing the Green. It reads like a restaurant that opened weeks ago and just hasn't turned its sign on yet. It hasn't opened at all, and the reason has nothing to do with construction.

The Building Is Finished. The Permit Isn't.

The former train depot next to the Newton Centre Green Line stop last operated as Deluxe Town Diner, which closed almost four years ago. Since then the 1800s station sat dark while the surrounding block filled back in around it. Union Depot LLC, doing business as Lockheart, has been rebuilding the space since 2024, and by most physical measures the work has been done for a while.

Here is the actual timeline, pulled from Newton permit and licensing records:

Two years of construction, then a two-year gap before the city even held its licensing hearing, and now a second, separate wait at the state level that has already outlasted the "few weeks" the ownership group first hoped for. If you assumed the June 16 vote was the finish line, that assumption is the thing this post is here to correct.

Why a City Yes Isn't a State Yes

Massachusetts restaurants that want to serve alcohol need two approvals, not one. The city board decides whether the business fits the neighborhood and grants local licenses. The ABCC, a state commission, has to separately approve the liquor license itself before a single drink can be legally poured. Most of the time that second step is a formality that clears in days. This time it hasn't, and neither the city nor the applicants have said publicly why.

The Newton Centre location will be run by Mark Hicklin, who has managed the original Wellesley Lockheart for four years without a violation on record, which makes the delay harder to explain away as an obvious red flag on his end. A June 11 fire-safety filing also names Derek Brady, the Wellesley founder, as the building's property owner and emergency contact. Brady's name carries some history in Newton: he previously managed the Union Street Restaurant in Piccadilly Square, which closed in 2023, and he separately owned The Draft Bar and Grille in Allston, which shut down in January 2026 after its liquor license was revoked. None of that means anything is wrong with this application. It does mean that when a state commission is slow, there is usually a file somewhere it wants to look at twice.

The approved plan itself is worth knowing regardless of when the doors open. The Newton Centre Lockheart is licensed for 86 seats inside and 9 on a patio, with hours running as late as 1 a.m. on weekends. According to testimony at the June hearing, that late closing time exists mainly for World Cup matches and late West Coast baseball, not for a typical Tuesday. The kitchen and patio are both expected to close by 10 p.m. most nights.

What's Already Open While Newton Centre Waits

The depot isn't the only thing that's moved in the village this year, and looking at what did open while Lockheart sat in limbo says something about how permitting actually plays out in Newton Centre.

A few blocks away on Beacon Street, Formosa Bun & Dumpling Factory took a very different path to the same finish line. Owner Kristina Pan, who spent three decades in New York's restaurant industry including years managing Benihana locations, started serving takeout orders out of the former Jake's Falafel Corner space during a soft launch in early December, even while her building permits were still working through the city. Then-City Councilor Rick Lipof got involved after hearing that Pan found the process slow, and the shop held its full ribbon-cutting on March 28 with Mayor Marc Laredo and Charles C.H. Liao, director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office of Boston, both in attendance.

That gap between soft opening and ribbon cutting is the detail that explains why Lockheart can't do the same thing. Formosa Bun is a counter-service bakery. It could sell buns for cash while paperwork caught up. Lockheart is licensed as a full bar with entertainment programming, which under Massachusetts law means it legally cannot serve anyone, food or otherwise tied to that license, until the state signs off. A nearly finished bar-and-restaurant build has no equivalent workaround. It either has its license or it stays dark.

A few other threads from this year round out the picture of a village in motion:

• Newton Asian Mart, moving into the former Walgreens at 22-28 Langley Road, was hit with two separate stop-work orders in 2026 before finally receiving a temporary certificate of occupancy that cleared it to open.
• Thistle & Leek, the Union Street gastropub chef-owners Kate and Trevor Smith opened during the pandemic in 2020, picked up recognition in the Michelin Guide's inaugural Boston edition, one of only 26 Greater Boston restaurants named.
• Sweet Dream, the chocolate and pastry shop on Union Street, closed and was replaced by Tess, a clothing boutique. Pon de Joy, the mochi donut shop on Sumner Street, closed and gave way to Tea22.
• Fig City News, which maintains a running directory of Newton restaurants, counted at least 12 openings or reopenings against 9 closings across the city this year, out of 187 total places to eat, 116 of them locally owned.

Read together, none of these moved faster because they were simpler businesses with less on the line. They moved because none of them needed a second government body's sign-off before they could legally operate.

What to Watch This Fall

If the attorney's estimate holds, Lockheart could open sometime in September. That estimate has already slipped once, so treat any specific date as optimistic until the doors are actually unlocked. The clearest signal to watch for is the ABCC's public license roster, which will show an issued license for Union Depot LLC the moment the state clears it. Until then, the takeout window on the Green side of the building is the best indicator of activity. Once that window opens for business, even quietly, the wait is effectively over.

In the meantime, the rest of Newton Centre isn't standing still. The farmers market at Newton North High School runs through October 31, and the fixed points on the fall calendar, the Bowl, the villages, the weekly gathering spots, are exactly what they've always been. The depot has just been the one thing on that map that hasn't caught up yet.

If you're the kind of person who tracks these things because you live here and the village is yours, you already knew most of the outline. If you didn't know why a fully built restaurant can sit locked for months after city approval, now you do, and it's the kind of detail that only shows up when someone's actually reading the permit filings instead of repeating the last headline.

That's the same instinct Arcay Realty brings to every conversation about Newton, whether you're asking about a restaurant on Union Street or a house three blocks off it. If you ever want a second opinion on what's actually happening in this market, not just what the listing photos suggest, Chenell Blake is easy to reach and always happy to talk shop about the neighborhood first.