9. Living Here

This section covers what a Ridgewood address gives an owner outside the house itself: the downtown, the parks, the library, the calendar, and the distance between a front door and the train. Where the Village publishes a number, it is here. Where it does not, the gap is marked rather than filled in.

The Central Business District

Ridgewood’s downtown is the roughly 12-block commercial district centered on East Ridgewood Avenue between the NJ Transit station and Maple Avenue, with Memorial Park at Van Neste Square at its center.

Storefront count and composition. The Village does not publish a current storefront inventory.†

Vacancy. The most recent published count is from a presentation by Ridgewood Guild Executive Director Tony Damiano to the Village Council in July 2024, as reported by a local news site.⁴⁷ That count is the only time series available.

Two things stand out. First, vacancies nearly doubled in the first half of 2024, from 12 to 23, and I found no published count since. Second, the Village does not publish a total storefront count, so there is no vacancy rate to compare with other towns.†

The December 14, 2023 CBDAC minutes (retrieved from the Village’s archived site) record five former vacancies being re-let at once (the former Racefaster, Tabboleh, M&T Bank, Fastachi, and Town & Country spaces), and record committee concern that certificate of occupancy delays were deterring retail tenants.⁵³ Those are the Village’s own words on turnover and they belong next to the vacancy figure.

Pedestrian plaza and dining corrals. This has been a five-year argument, and it is not settled.

• 2020 and 2021: weekend street closures and on-street dining corrals introduced during the pandemic.
• March 2022: the Council voted to remove the corrals and end the weekend closures, over restaurant objections, on the stated basis that on-street parking was more valuable to retailers than the seating was to restaurants.⁵⁴
• June 3, 2023: the plaza returned as “Destination Ridgewood,” Saturdays and Sundays through October 9. On July 13 it was cut to Saturdays only. On August 3 the Village Manager suspended it for the rest of August.⁵⁵
• December 2023: the CBDAC agreed to write a “lessons learned” white paper before recommending anything further to Council. The same minutes record that restaurants would not invest in corral aesthetics without year-to-year certainty that the corrals would return.⁵⁶

There is no Village record of a plaza operating in 2024, 2025, or 2026.†

Parking and the Hudson Street garage. The Village bonded $12 million in July 2018, on top of $810,000 appropriated in 2014, 2015, and earlier in 2018, for a four-level, 240-space garage on Hudson Street next to the station.⁵⁷ It opened November 6, 2020.⁵⁸ As of the Village’s 2024 parking page, all kiosks in the garage, on street, and in lots charge $1.25 per hour; the first level is three-hour parking, levels two and three open to three-hour parking after noon, and level four is reserved for CBD employees. Enforcement runs Monday through Friday 9 am to 8 pm and Saturday 10 am to 6 pm; Sunday is free. A CBD employee hangtag is $110 per month.⁵⁹ The 2018 bond was sized on a 240-space garage after voters approved a 400-space design in 2015 and rejected a 325-space alternative; the garage that got built is the smallest of the three.⁶⁰

Downtown rezoning, January 2026. Five ordinances, numbered 4071 through 4075, went to the Planning Board on January 6, 2026 and to a Council public hearing on January 14, 2026. As described in the published summaries: Ordinance 4071 creates a senior overlay at North Maple, Franklin, and Marshall for an assisted-living facility of more than 100 units; Ordinance 4073 creates a commercial-residential zone on the Chestnut Street corridor at roughly 30 units per acre and 45 feet; Ordinance 4074 raises the standard density in the downtown B-1 and B-2 districts from 18 to 20 units per acre, with a targeted area at 24; and Ordinance 4075 imposes a 20% affordable set-aside on new residential development regardless of tenure.⁶¹⁶² These create zoning capacity; they do not approve buildings.† See the “forward-looking decisions” note at the end of this section.

Parks and recreation

Graydon Pool. Graydon is a 2.68-acre, spring-fed, sand-bottom swimming pond built in 1926 and enlarged in 1936 as a Works Progress Administration project. Preservation New Jersey placed it on its 10 Most Endangered list in 2010 after the Council considered demolishing it for a concrete pool; that plan was shelved indefinitely that year for budget reasons.⁶³ It is not a conventional pool, and buyers who expect one should visit before they buy.

The 2026 season ran May 30 through August 30, plus September 5, 6 and 7 for Labor Day weekend, 11 am to 7 pm daily.⁶⁴ New in 2026: residents 65 and over receive a complimentary membership with documentation, and shade structures were added across the facility.⁶⁵

Fees, as published by the Village and reproduced by local press:

2026 figures from the Village’s Graydon Pool page (Membership 2026 Fee Schedule), retrieved September 7, 2026.⁶⁶ 2018 and 2023 figures from Village announcements as reproduced by The Ridgewood Blog.⁶⁷⁶⁸ A 3% convenience fee applies to credit card purchases of pool, tennis, pickleball, and skatepark memberships and day camp.⁶⁹⁷⁰ The Village page lists the resident senior badge at $35 for 2026, while the May 2026 announcement reproduced by local press described a complimentary membership for residents 65 and over with documentation; the two are reconciled only by the Recreation Department.†

Resident adult fees rose 21% between 2018 and 2023 and were held flat for 2026. Non-resident fees rose 18% and were also held flat. Under Village Code, use of the pool is limited to residents, their guests, and Village and school district employees; a 2007 provision that had admitted residents of adjoining towns expired September 3, 2012.⁷¹

Memorial Park at Van Neste Square. The downtown green at East Ridgewood Avenue and Broad Street. It is the site of the Chamber’s car show, the December tree lighting, and the summer concert series. No acreage is published.

The Duck Pond. The Wild Duck Pond area on East Ridgewood Avenue is a Bergen County facility, part of the 577-acre Saddle River County Park. It has picnic areas, an electric pavilion (permit required), an ADA-accessible playground, a dog park, fishing (state license required), permitted model boating, and ice skating when conditions allow. The county’s multi-use path through the park is about 6 miles long and runs through Ridgewood, Glen Rock, Fair Lawn, Paramus, Saddle Brook, and Rochelle Park.⁷² The county, not the Village, maintains it; Ridgewood taxes pay for it only through the county levy.

Athletic fields. Veterans Field (131 North Maple Avenue, behind Village Hall) is the Village’s principal field complex and the venue for the July 4 fireworks and the Ridgewood Run start.⁷³⁷⁴†

Ridgewood Public Library. 125 North Maple Avenue, 34,000 square feet, adjacent to Village Hall and Veterans Field. Hours as of September 2026: Monday through Thursday 9 am to 9 pm, Friday 9 am to 6 pm, Saturday 9 am to 5 pm, Sunday 1 pm to 5 pm.⁷⁵

The renovation was funded privately rather than by Village bond. A $500,000 gift from the Ridgewood Public Library Foundation paid for the first phase beginning June 2023: a teen room 60% larger, seven reservable mezzanine study rooms (six for up to four people, one for up to ten), a new lobby, and a repositioned first-floor service desk.⁷⁶ A $1 million legacy gift from the Bolger Foundation, announced April 2023, funded the auditorium and the technology training room.⁷⁷ In September 2025 the Friends and the Foundation merged into a single Friends Foundation of the Ridgewood Public Library.⁷⁸ The library has adopted a 2026 to 2029 Strategic Plan.⁷⁹ Trustees meet the third Tuesday of each month at 7:30 pm, no August meeting.⁸⁰†

Farmers market

Operated by the Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce, not the Village. Sundays, 8:30 am to 2 pm, in the west-side parking lot of the train station. The 2024 season ran June 23 through October 27; the 2025 season opened June 22; the 2026 season opened June 28 and was still listed on the Chamber calendar for September 6, 2026.⁸¹⁸²†

Youth sports

Registration for Village-run programs and for the Ridgewood Soccer Association runs through the Community Pass platform.⁸³

The annual calendar

The Chamber reports “over 300 members.”⁹³ A private nonprofit funding the town’s signature event from ticket sales, and cancelling it without refunds when weather intervenes, is the arrangement; it is not a Village service and should not be described as one.

Distance to the station

Ridgewood station (Garber Square) averaged 1,228 weekday boardings in 2025, 26th of 153 NJ Transit stations.⁹⁴ The table gives straight-line distance from a fixed public address in each area to the station. Straight-line understates walking distance, typically by 15% to 30% on Ridgewood’s street grid, and does not account for grade. These are distances, not judgments.

Coordinates from the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder; station coordinates 40.9807 N, 74.1205 W; haversine calculation by Ashish Desai Group, September 7, 2026.⁹⁵†

What I tell my buyers: the number on the Graydon badge is not the number to watch. The one to watch is the CBD ordinance file. If 4073 and 4074 were adopted as introduced, the Chestnut Street corridor and the downtown B zones can now carry 30 and 24 units per acre respectively, at 45 feet. That is not a building; it is the right to propose one, and the first proposals will arrive inside the holding period of anyone buying this year.

† Figures marked with a dagger are best-effort research, so verify them with the issuing office (the Village of Ridgewood, the school district, the county, the state or the utility) before making judgment calls or decisions on them.