For more than three decades, Aldar Bistro served risotto and rack of lamb at 281 Montgomery Avenue, the kind of place where the same regulars had the same table for twenty years. The Wakim family closed it on July 31, 2026. Six doors down, at 273 Montgomery, a bagel shop that started as a wholesale operation in West Philadelphia was mid-buildout for a grand opening the same week. Neither business replacing the other tells you much on its own. What tells you something is that half a mile away, on the opposite end of the neighborhood, an entirely different kind of change was happening at the same time, driven by a single developer with a $170 million master plan instead of a family handing off a set of keys. Bala Cynwyd isn't becoming one thing right now. It's running three different experiments on three different blocks, and a resident who walks all three in an afternoon crosses three different theories of how a neighborhood should grow.
Montgomery Avenue Is Trading Legacy for Legacy
The Aldar closure wasn't a business failing. It was a transition, and it's being handled like one. The new owners of the space, two families with roots in Calabria, are opening a Southern Italian restaurant called Bruzi. Luciano Spensierato has tended bar at Center City's Gran Caffè L'Aquila since 2015, joined a year later by Marco Mondello. Tania Spensierato, whose background is in restaurants even though she currently works in retail, put it simply when she talked about why Montgomery Avenue specifically: "Bala Cynwyd and Lower Merion really fit that vision." Aldar stays open until its liquor license transfer clears, which the outgoing owners expect could happen this September, followed by about two months of renovation. That puts a realistic opening window at late October or November 2026.
A few storefronts over, the other side of that same street just got its own homecoming. Brett and Kyle Frankel, Bala Cynwyd natives and Lower Merion High School graduates, opened the third location of their bagel shop, Bart's Bagels, at 273 Montgomery Avenue this August. The first two locations, in West and South Philadelphia, are grab-and-go only. The Bala Cynwyd shop is the only one with seats, and customers can watch the kettle-boiling and baking through an open kitchen. Brett has talked about hanging around that exact building after middle school, back when it was a Bravo Pizza. The shop has a fan base that includes Jason and Kylie Kelce, who have reportedly ordered from the West Philly location weekly for four or five years. When the Bala Cynwyd opening was announced, Kylie's comment on the brand's social post was three words: "I could cry."
Two storefronts, two very different transitions, and a common thread. Montgomery Avenue isn't being redeveloped from outside. It's being handed forward by people who already had roots in it, whether that's a family that ran a restaurant there for thirty years or a pair of brothers who grew up a five minute walk from where they now serve breakfast.
City Avenue Is Building Its Main Street From a Blueprint
Half a mile north, the model is the opposite. Federal Realty Investment Trust's Bala Cynwyd on City Avenue project represents an investment approaching $170 million, and it isn't emerging block by block through individual owners deciding what comes next. It's being assembled all at once, centered on The Blayr, a 217-unit residential building that opened on the site of the former Lord & Taylor. Residents started moving in this past March. The building adds nearly 19,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and comes with a pool, a golf simulator, and work-from-home suites, aimed at a mix of young professionals, couples, and people downsizing from bigger homes nearby.
The retail lineup announced for that ground floor reads like a corridor being curated rather than one filling in organically: Chopt Creative Salad Co., NAYA (a Lebanese fast-casual concept with build-your-own bowls and house-made hummus), and Hammer & Nails Grooming Shop, together occupying about 7,000 square feet and expected to open in summer 2026. The broader project, once finished, is planned to bring more than 300 residential units and roughly 190,000 square feet of retail to a corridor already anchored by an Acme, an LA Fitness, an Olive Garden, and a Michaels.
| Corridor | What's changing | Who's driving it | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Montgomery Avenue | Aldar Bistro closing, Bruzi opening; Bart's Bagels opened | Independent owners with local roots | Bart's open now; Bruzi expected late Oct/Nov 2026 |
| City Avenue | The Blayr's 217 units plus Chopt, NAYA, Hammer & Nails | Federal Realty, single master developer | Blayr residents moving in since March; retail opening summer 2026 |
| Bala Avenue | Historic commercial core, unchanged footprint | Preservation groups, longtime property owners | Ongoing |
Bala Avenue Never Needed a Developer to Stay Relevant
The third corridor isn't changing at all in the way the other two are, and that's worth sitting with. Bala Avenue is the original village center, home to the Bala Theatre, a 1,450-seat movie palace that opened as the Egyptian Theatre in 1926, designed by the Philadelphia firm Hoffman-Henon in full Egyptian Revival style. The Sotolidis family bought it in 1987 specifically to keep it from closing, and it was triplexed in 1995. Its screens haven't reliably run first-run features in recent years, but the building itself was never at risk of disappearing. A local preservation conservancy has called it the keystone of historic Bala Avenue, crucial to the district's revitalization. That's a different kind of stability than Montgomery Avenue's family handoffs or City Avenue's developer blueprint. Bala Avenue's continuity comes from a group of people deciding a hundred-year-old building is worth protecting even when it isn't generating revenue, which is its own kind of investment, just measured in years instead of square footage.
The Trail Is the Only Thing Touching All Three
Here's what actually connects these three separate stories. The Cynwyd Heritage Trail, a two-mile multi-use path running from Cynwyd Station past Bala Cynwyd Park and West Laurel Hill Cemetery to the Manayunk Viaduct, was extended this year, with a new southern segment that now runs past Cynwyd Station along the active SEPTA line to Bala Station. That extension physically links the trail to City Avenue, where The Blayr's own walking path ties directly into it, giving new residents there a car-free route toward the SEPTA Cynwyd Line and Center City.
The same trail is also where the Friends of the Cynwyd Heritage Trail, a volunteer group founded in 2008, host their community events. This Friday, September 25, at 7 PM, they're screening "Hocus Pocus" at Cynwyd Station Park, with the Union Fire Association's second floor as the rain location. Bring your own chairs and blankets. It's free.
That's the part a spreadsheet doesn't capture. A resident who bikes the trail's new southern extension past The Blayr's pool deck on a Tuesday can walk the same route to a free movie night on a Friday, past a triplexed Egyptian Revival theater that's stood on Bala Avenue since 1926, past a bagel counter run by two guys who grew up around the corner. Three different growth models, one continuous path between them.
If you've watched these three corridors shift and found yourself wondering what any of it means for a home you already own on one of the streets nearby, that's a conversation worth having before you guess at the answer. The MacDonald Team knows this stretch of the Main Line block by block, and we're always glad to talk through what it's actually worth right now.
