Washington Street Finally Caught Up With Its Own Reputation

Walk down Washington Street in Haverhill this month and you will notice something that would not have been true a year ago: every storefront between the river and the old shoe district is doing something. Tables are full at 6 p.m. on a Tuesday. A four-story building that sat half-finished for the better part of two years now has a working kitchen on the ground floor and a cocktail menu upstairs. As WHAV reported, On The Corner Grill opened a second location a few blocks from City Hall in Haverhill this June.

That last detail is the one worth sitting with. The opening brings a restaurant with an established Derry following to downtown Haverhill. This September, downtown Haverhill is showing its work.

The Building That Took Two Years to Reach Full Operation

The address is 77 Washington Street, and if you have lived in Haverhill for more than a few years, you remember it as the Barking Dog Ale House. As WHAV reported, in September 2024, the Haverhill License Commission unanimously approved liquor, food, and entertainment licenses for a new concept there called The Reserve, a four-floor project from owner Sharbel Azzi. At the time, Azzi told commissioners his partner had fifteen to twenty years in the restaurant business and that the building would hold a restaurant on the first two floors, a lounge on the third, and function space above that.

Building it out took longer than a single summer. As WHAV reported, by July 2025, only portions of the project had opened, and the Washington Street Shoe Historic District Commission was still reviewing signage for the ground-floor restaurant even as the third-floor space, now called Vault 77 Lounge, was already pouring cocktails. It was not until this year that the full concept, now operating as The Reserve Steakhouse, came online with its own ordering system and posted hours.

Two years between a license approval and a fully operating restaurant is not a fast timeline. The project came online in stages: Vault 77 Lounge was operating while construction continued below, and The Reserve Steakhouse followed after the rest of the building was ready.

A Derry Restaurant Adds a Haverhill Location

A few blocks away, at Harbor Place Residences on Merrimack Street, a different kind of bet just paid off. On The Corner Grill, an Italian-American comfort food spot that built a loyal following in Derry, New Hampshire, opened its second location in Haverhill this June, in a storefront overlooking the Merrimack River. Co-owners George and Sthefany Chiachio run the original; the new spot is meant as an extension of it rather than a reinvention, serving the same style of food in a room with river views the Derry location never had.

What makes this worth noting is the direction of the move. Derry is a growing town in its own right, with its own restaurant scene and its own rents. The new location brings the restaurant's established Derry style to a Massachusetts mill city. On The Corner Grill opened for dinner only in its first weekend, and the plan since has been to expand hours as the team settles in.

The Reserve Steakhouse, Vault 77 Lounge, and On The Corner Grill represent two projects in two different buildings, backed by two different ownership groups. Together, the three venues add distinct dining options to downtown Haverhill.

One Saturday, Two Festivals

If you want to see what all that new capacity is for, September 12 is the day to be downtown. Team Haverhill, the volunteer organization that has run the River Ruckus since 2010, brings the event back to Riverfront Park and Washington Street for a full day along the Merrimack, with live music from 92.5 The River, a classic car show, a beer and wine garden, and a fireworks display to close out the evening. Washington Street closes to traffic from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. that day for the car show, so if you are planning to eat downtown that afternoon, plan your parking around it rather than through it.

The same Saturday, a few blocks up the hill, the Haverhill Art Festival takes over Bradford Common Historic District starting at 9 a.m. It is a different crowd and a different pace, closer to a juried craft and gallery walk than a riverside block party. Locals who have done both before tend to start at the Art Festival in the morning, when the common is calm, and drift down to the river by early afternoon as the car show and music pick up. Team Haverhill's Community Corner at River Ruckus also gives table space to a run of local nonprofits this year, including Historic New England, Creative Haverhill, MakeIt Haverhill, and the Sons of Italy, so the festival doubles as a low-key check-in with the organizations doing year-round work in the city.

Having two events of this size on the same day, on foot from each other, is not an accident of scheduling so much as a sign of how much downtown infrastructure now exists to absorb a crowd that size without funneling everyone into the same three blocks.

The Slow Walk Around Kenoza Lake

The following weekend offers a quieter version of the same idea. On September 20, Team Haverhill hosts Let's Hike Haverhill: Winnekenni Park Kenoza Lake Circumnavigation, a 5.3-mile walk around the full perimeter of Kenoza Lake starting at 131 Amesbury Road. The route runs mostly on easy, flat terrain, with one stretch that follows the shoulder of Route 110, and it is led by two of Haverhill's own trail stewards, Tom Wylie and Mike Demers, the volunteers who maintain the park's trail network the rest of the year.

Winnekenni itself is worth the trip even outside of an organized hike. The park covers 700 acres with close to 9.5 miles of trails, and its name comes from an Algonquin word generally translated as "very beautiful," which is not an exaggeration once you are standing at the shoreline looking back at Winnekenni Castle. The castle was built between 1873 and 1875 by Dr. James R. Nichols, a chemist who used local glacial boulders in its construction partly to prove to Haverhill's farmers that the stones they kept digging out of their fields had a use beyond marking property lines. The full circumnavigation is longer than the standard shoreline loop most regulars walk, so this is a good month to see parts of the park you have driven past without ever hiking.

What This Month Actually Shows

None of this reads like a neighborhood in transition anymore. A four-floor restaurant project took two years to reach full operation. An established New Hampshire operator opened a second location across a state line in Haverhill. A volunteer organization runs a festival large enough to need a street closure and a companion event across town on the same day. And the same organization turns around a week later to lead residents on a five-mile walk around a lake most of them have visited a hundred times but never fully circled.

That is not a neighborhood waiting to arrive. That is a neighborhood that businesses and volunteers alike are already treating as arrived, and September is simply the month it is easiest to see.

If you already call Haverhill home, this is the kind of month worth building a weekend around. And if you know someone thinking about moving to a Merrimack Valley community with this much going on, Prestige Properties is happy to talk through what buying or selling here actually looks like right now.