"We instantly fell in love with the location's size, main street feel, and proximity to the new Watchtower Brewing"
That's Shane Loomis, who runs Top Nach with his wife Missy, explaining why they signed a lease at 19 W. Bel Air Ave. in Aberdeen for their first brick-and-mortar restaurant. Top Nach didn't need a location. It needed a specific block, and it picked that block because of what had already opened nearby in downtown Aberdeen a few weeks before the lease was signed.
That's the detail worth sitting with if you live in Harford County and have noticed something different happening downtown this year. It isn't just that restaurants are opening. It's that they're opening in clusters, on specific streets, for specific reasons, and the reasons aren't the same in Havre de Grace as they are in Aberdeen. One downtown is filling storefronts that recently went dark. The other is watching one opening pull the next one in behind it. Both are visible from the sidewalk this month if you know where to look.
Washington Street Fills Back In
In 2023, North Washington Street in Havre de Grace lost a longtime anchor when Goll's Bakery closed after 92 years in the same building. In August 2025, it lost another when Abbey Burger shut its doors after five years, citing ongoing street closures and the building's sale. For a stretch, that left two visible gaps on one of the town's main commercial blocks.
Both gaps are filled now, and a third storefront nearby is on its way to joining them. Butcher on the Bay, a steakhouse from the Geresbeck family that also runs Geresbeck's Food Market and the Butcher & Bay specialty shop in Kingsville, opened July 15 at 226 N. Washington St., the Abbey Burger address. The building itself, the Elizabeth Rodgers House, dates to the late 1700s and is the only property in Havre de Grace known to have survived the War of 1812, a detail the new ownership has leaned into rather than covered over. Chef Ricky Foxwell, who trained at Michelin-starred kitchens in Italy and worked under a master chef in Stuttgart before running kitchens at the Westin in Annapolis and the Don CeSar in Florida, is building the menu around beef from Roseda Farm in Monkton alongside Chesapeake staples like crab and blue catfish.
A few doors down at 207 N. Washington St., Kooper's Saloon has already opened in the former Laurrapin Grille space. The original Kooper's built its name in Fells Point, where Zagat named it a must-try burger destination back in 2014, and it brought that same menu of Angus, Wagyu, and lamb burgers north along with a full seafood list. An outdoor addition called Sam's Seafood Shack, a multi-tiered patio with water views, was targeted to open on the same site by summer's end.
Between those two, at 234 N. Washington St., Newberry Café and Bakery is renovating the old Goll's Bakery building, a structure that dates to around 1907 when it first opened as the Fahey Hotel. Owner Nichol Barbes already runs a Newberry location in Bel Air known for apple fritters and custom cakes, and this is an expansion into a building the town has watched sit empty for three years.
Proven Operators, Not Startups
What makes this pattern worth noticing isn't just the count. It's who's doing the opening. None of these three businesses is a first-time operator betting everything on an unproven idea. The Geresbeck family has run grocery stores and a butcher shop in the region for years before opening a steakhouse. Kooper's had already built a following and a Zagat mention in Fells Point before bringing the concept to Havre de Grace. Newberry already had a working bakery in Bel Air before taking on a second building.
That matters if you're the kind of resident who's watched storefronts turn over before and wondered whether the new tenant would last a season or a decade. A downtown filling with unknown startups is a different bet than a downtown filling with operators who've already proven a concept somewhere else and are now investing a second time. The Havre de Grace corridor is doing the latter, three times over, on one street.
Aberdeen Bets on What's Next Door
Aberdeen's version of this story runs on a different mechanism. Watchtower Brewing Company opened December 3, 2025, at 22 Howard St., becoming Aberdeen's first brewery. Three Harford County friends, Joe Fino, Frank Young, and George Handlin, converted a former dry cleaning building into a five-barrel brewery and taproom overlooking Festival Park.
"Today feels pretty amazing, and because it's about more than Watchtower, it's about Aberdeen"
Fino said that at the grand opening, and the months since have made the point for him. Top Nach's decision to lease space nearby wasn't a general bet on downtown Aberdeen. It was a specific bet on being close to Watchtower, the way Loomis described it. That's a different kind of pull than a landlord filling a vacancy. It's one opening creating gravity that a second opening moves toward.
Bel Air Joins In, On a Different Clock
Bel Air's downtown is adding to the same story on its own schedule. A second location of John Brown General & Butchery, the Cockeysville butcher shop known for encouraging customers toward cuts beyond the standard rib-eye, was set to open in downtown Bel Air this September. Owner Robert Voss grew up in the area and said the decision to expand there came from wanting to affect the community where he now lives with his own family.
Burtons Grill & Bar, a contemporary American chain with locations already open in Gaithersburg and Riverdale Park, has been renovating the former TGI Fridays building at 609 Belair Road for its 21st location and first in Harford County. Construction started last fall with a spring or summer 2026 opening targeted, making it the slowest-moving addition of the group and one worth checking on directly if you're planning a visit rather than assuming it's open.
What's Actually Open Right Now
If you're trying to sort out what you can walk into today versus what's still weeks or months out, here's where things stand as of this writing:
- Open now: Butcher on the Bay (Havre de Grace), Kooper's Saloon (Havre de Grace), Watchtower Brewing Company (Aberdeen)
- Under renovation, no confirmed date: Newberry Café and Bakery (Havre de Grace)
- Targeted for late summer/early fall 2026: Sam's Seafood Shack patio (Havre de Grace), John Brown General & Butchery (Bel Air, September)
- Lease signed, opening date not yet announced: Top Nach (Aberdeen)
- Construction ongoing, opening window uncertain: Burtons Grill & Bar (Bel Air)
Why Two Different Downtowns Are Filling In the Same Year
Havre de Grace was also named a finalist for Parade magazine's America's Favorite Small Towns this year, which tracks with what's happening on Washington Street: a downtown that lost two anchors in two years is now the kind of place established operators want to reinvest in rather than write off. Aberdeen's Second Saturday events at Festival Park run May through October, which means the same brewery-to-food-truck pull that brought Top Nach in is still playing out on a monthly stage through the rest of October.
Neither story required the other to happen. Havre de Grace filled vacancies with proven names willing to take on historic buildings. Aberdeen watched one opening create enough foot traffic that a second business moved specifically to be near it. Both add up to the same thing if you live here: more reasons to walk downtown on a Friday night than you had two years ago, in two different parts of the county, for two different reasons.
If you're weighing what a place like Havre de Grace, Aberdeen, or Bel Air might mean for your own next move in Harford County, whether that's a first home, a second one, or land nearby, Dustin Prievo knows this ground on both sides of the Pennsylvania and Maryland line. Contact Us to talk through what you're looking for.
