For years, the walk from Riverpoint Shopping Center down to Bradley Road has been a study in gaps. A screen printer where a café might have been. A shuttered gas station on the northeast corner of Bradley and Port Washington, boarded up and quiet since the early 2000s. A Mexican restaurant that anchored the plaza for more than a decade, then went dark last fall.
That stretch is being reassembled this year, and not by accident. A single village policy change is behind most of it, and three specific openings within a half mile of each other are about to reshape what a Saturday in Fox Point looks like.
The Village Rule That Unlocked the Corner
The mechanism is a rezoning tool called the Port Washington Overlay District, or PWO. Fox Point created it to make it easier to convert parcels along Port Washington Road to commercial use, and it is doing exactly what the village hoped it would.
John Degroote, the founder and CEO of the Bay View cooperative New Barons Brewing, credited that policy directly when he described how his new Fox Point brewery came together. He discovered that Fox Point had recently created legislation that makes it easier to re-zone properties along Port Washington Road for commercial use, and he began working with Assistant Village Manager Kevin Ausman on finding a site. The Village Board held a public hearing on December 9, 2025, to consider rezoning the property at 8000 N. Port Washington Road to add the PWO designation that would allow the brewery and taproom. Final approval came later that month.
That single hearing is the reason the corner at Bradley is finally moving.
Three Openings, Half a Mile Apart
The new arrivals are close enough to walk between. Here is what is actually landing, in the order you would encounter them heading north on Port Washington Road.
Acronym Brewing Co., 8000 N. Port Washington Rd.
The former Northpoint Service Center gas station has sat vacant for roughly two decades. Degroote, a Fox Point resident since around 2017, is turning it into Acronym Brewing Co., with New Barons holding an ownership stake.
The plan is a mix of renovation and new construction. The current 1,700-square-foot building would be repurposed as the production space, while an approximately 2,200-square-foot addition would house a new taproom. Inside, seating would include 11 spots at the bar and 54 at tables. Outside, patrons could gather on a patio adjacent to the taproom or in a grassy area near Bradley Road. New Barons anticipates investing $480,000 to overhaul the existing building and another $920,000 for the expansion.
The brewery grew out of something residents already know. For 4 years now, New Barons has been running a beer garden there, first at the now defunct pool, and then at the Longacre Skating Pavilion. Degroote is targeting a late 2026 opening. Expect a full bar in addition to the taps, family-friendly outdoor space with a play area, big interior windows into the brewhouse, and a rotating food truck partnership rather than a full kitchen. One beer already has a name that tells you the concept: POINT, for Pale Oat IPA, New England Type.
Las Cazuelas Chilaquiles & Taco Bar, 8617 N. Port Washington Rd.
The plaza space that housed Jose's Blue Sombrero for more than ten years, until Jose's closed in October 2025, has been taken over by Las Cazuelas Chilaquiles & Taco Bar. The West Allis original has been operating on West Greenfield Avenue for about a year and a half, and the second Fox Point location is planned to open in early June.
The menu carries over intact: tacos, chilaquiles, margaritas, homemade sauces, tres leches and Mexican Fish Fry on Fridays. But there will be something completely new at the Fox Point location: live music on a spacious outdoor patio in the evenings. That patio matters. Riverpoint has always been a lunch-and-go plaza. A patio program with music turns it into a place you stay.
Donut Zone, 8687 N. Port Washington Rd.
A few doors down in the same shopping center, a new donut shop and café is coming this summer to Fox Point's Riverpoint Shopping Center at 8687 N. Port Washington Road. The new shop, Donut Zone, has plans to open in mid June. Owner Bao Nguyen is leasing the roughly 1,400 square feet that used to hold Fully Promoted, a screen printer. It will sell donuts, kolaches, breakfast sandwiches, coffee and more. The business is primarily takeout oriented with limited indoor seating accommodations.
Kolaches are the tell. They are not what you order between yoga and errands by accident. Someone did their homework on what this end of Port Washington Road was missing on a weekend morning.
The Saturday That Now Works
Put the three together with what was already here, and Fox Point suddenly has a Saturday circuit that did not exist a year ago.
- 8:00 a.m. Fox Point Farmers' Market opens in the North Shore Congregational Church lot at 7330 N. Santa Monica Blvd. Saturdays, June 13 through September 26, 8 a.m. to noon. Vendors offer fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry, eggs, fish and cheese. Additional products include baked goods, jam, honey, syrup, sauces, soup and other prepared foods. Volunteers have been running it since 2003.
- 10:00 a.m. Live music starts at the market. Prepared foods to enjoy at the market or take home include African, Asian, Greek and Mexican specialties. Enjoy music every week from 10-noon, plant diagnostics and story time monthly. Crepes a GoGo joined the vendor list this season.
- Mid-morning. Detour a half mile east to Donut Zone for kolaches and coffee, or grab something at Matilda Bakehouse or Benji's Delicatessen if the market line is long.
- Lunch. Las Cazuelas for chilaquiles, or the Friday fish fry if you shifted the whole plan a day earlier.
- Late 2026, evenings. Acronym patio with a food truck, kids running in the grassy area near Bradley, music within the limits the village negotiated.
That is a full-day rotation inside a mile and a half of one street. Two years ago the same map had two long-vacant storefronts and a boarded gas station on it.
Why This Corner, and Why Now
The reason New Barons picked Fox Point is worth pausing on because it tells you how the village is being read from the outside. In the proposal submitted to the village, the brewery argued that craft beer has a core demographic of Millennials reaching middle age, living in the suburbs and starting families. Local school enrollment data suggest that Fox Point fits this profile and will continue to do so in the years to come.
That is a specific bet on who is already here, not a pitch to bring new people in. Degroote himself has been living it. He described Fox Point as an awesome residential community, but noted the local night life, let alone craft beer scene, is much to be desired. Something more permanent in the village, obviously became a topic of conversation. It was clear that a real thirst for craft beer existed there, and people simply wanted a place to gather.
The four summers of beer gardens at the former pool and at Longacre gave him the demand data he needed. The PWO District gave him the parcel. The residents who kept showing up gave him the confidence to put $1.4 million into a corner that had been empty for twenty years.
What to Put on the Calendar
- Now through September 26: Fox Point Farmers' Market, Saturdays 8 a.m. to noon, 7330 N. Santa Monica Blvd. Leashed dogs welcome.
- Open now: Donut Zone and Las Cazuelas at Riverpoint, 8617 and 8687 N. Port Washington Rd.
- Late 2026: Acronym Brewing soft opening at 8000 N. Port Washington Rd. Watch for permit and construction updates on the Village of Fox Point calendar.
- Ongoing: New Barons beer garden pop-ups at Longacre Pavilion continue while Acronym is under construction.
If you have lived in Fox Point long enough to remember what the Bradley corner looked like a decade ago, this year is the one where the map finally changes. The village used a zoning tool most residents will never read, and the result is showing up as a donut shop, a taco patio, and a brewery you can walk your kids to.
When the moment does come to buy, sell, or think through a move within the North Shore, The Wright Group is here with the same attention to the small details that make a neighborhood work. Reach out anytime to start a conversation.
