If you've lived in Carteret for more than a couple of years, you already know the drill at Waterfront Park. Mini golf next to the marina, a walk out to Veteran's Pier, the Goethals Bridge in the distance, maybe a Friday night concert if the weather cooperates. What's different now is that the park, the Washington Avenue restaurant strip, the Performing Arts and Events Center, and the ferry pilings on the Arthur Kill have stopped being separate amenities. They are being wired together into one continuous stretch, and the timeline for the whole thing snaps into focus in December 2027.
This post is for the resident who wants to know what to actually do this season, and what will be different by next year. Read it as a map of a place that is halfway through a rewrite.
Washington Avenue Is Doing Something It Wasn't Doing In 2023
The address to memorize is 46 Washington Street, home of the Carteret Performing Arts and Events Center. The 2026 calendar has real weight behind it: Air Supply on May 29, Jo Dee Messina on June 12, Los Lobos with Los Lonely Boys on June 20, Trace Adkins on September 18, WASP with KK's Priest on October 3, plus a Menopause The Musical 2 matinee on May 31. Capacity is 1,650. That is a room built for touring acts, not a community-theater box, and the programming reflects it.
Two blocks of that street are now filling in around the venue. Lab X opened at 265 Washington Ave in late 2025, described by its ownership as a fusion of Mediterranean and Indian cuisine with a hookah lounge and DJ programming, open 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. daily. LVLZ, a rooftop hibachi concept, is under construction on the rooftop and ground floor of The Botanic at 36 Washington Ave. Both come from Badwals Enterprises, which also runs Xperience in the Avenel section of Woodbridge and Taco Empreso in Edison. Executive chef Angel Rivera was raised in Woodbridge and lives in Perth Amboy, which explains why the group's central-Jersey footprint keeps thickening rather than jumping to Manhattan. OU LA at 29 Washington Ave has been on the block longer, with a globally inspired menu, live music, and a late kitchen on Fridays and Saturdays until 1 a.m.
The through-line is that Washington Avenue now supports a full evening. Dinner, a show, a late drink, all inside a three-block walk. That wasn't true two years ago.
The Park Stopped Being A Park
Waterfront Park at 200 Middlesex Ave used to read as a single thing: a walking loop with amenities. It is now closer to a programmed venue with an outdoor footprint.
The core is still there. A mile of brick path along the Arthur Kill, chess and checkers tables, bocce, shuffleboard, horseshoes, volleyball, a playground, fishing off Veteran's Pier with cleaning stations, and a mini golf course with resurfaced greens. Mini golf runs $5 for adults and $4 for kids, weekend-only until June 1 and then daily through the season. Dogs are not permitted outside of service animals, which is worth mentioning because it catches people off guard on their first visit.
What's new is the layer on top. A prefabricated Pier Pavilion, described by the Borough as a three-season outdoor tiki bar and snack stand, is going in on the southern end of Veteran's Pier next to the Municipal Marina, placed away from the active fishing lanes. A 25-foot mobile kitchen was built out to serve food and beverages spring through fall, particularly during the Independence Day Festival, Latin Fest, and the weekly Concerts by the Bay series. Latin Fest specifically is billed by the Borough as one of the most attended Latin festivals in the state, with fireworks and a beer garden. The improvements package runs north of $4 million, backed by a $1.5 million Middlesex County Open Space Grant and a $73,000 Local Recreation Improvement Grant from the state Department of Community Affairs.
Then the geography starts to grow. A 2.5-mile Riverwalk is under construction, running north and south from the park, beginning at Noes Creek and continuing to the Port Reading border. A separate $1.5 million NJDOT grant is funding what Mayor Daniel Reiman has described as a Rails-to-Trails concept, converting an abandoned rail line that parallels Peter J. Sica Highway into a spur that would close a five-mile loop around the park.
"We're grateful to NJDOT for their support of our continued efforts to turn our former 'chemical coastline' into a recreational destination, not only with the forthcoming Riverwalk but also Waterfront Park, Veteran's Pier, and a marina." Mayor Daniel J. Reiman
That quote is the actual thesis of everything happening on the water right now. The park was step one. The Riverwalk is step two. The ferry terminal is step three.
The Ferry Is A Countdown, Not A Promise
For decades the idea of ferry service returning to Carteret sat somewhere between rumor and campaign speech. As of December 12, 2025, it is a construction site. The Borough broke ground that day on the Carteret Multimodal Ferry Terminal Building, a four-story, 52,000-square-foot terminal on a former Dupont brownfield along the Arthur Kill. Governor Phil Murphy, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, and NJDOT Commissioner Francis O'Connor attended the groundbreaking.
The specifics are worth committing to memory because they change the math on where you live:
| Metric | Detail |
|---|---|
| Construction contract | $47.5 million to Brockwell & Carrington Contractors |
| Terminal completion target | December 2027 |
| Service start | Early 2028 |
| Vessels | Two 149-passenger boats |
| Parking | 700-space lot on site |
| Initial schedule | 3 to 4 morning trips, 3 to 4 evening trips |
| Manhattan stops | World Financial Center, West 39th Street, Wall Street |
| Intermodal connections | NJ Transit buses, municipal jitneys, NJ Rideshare |
| Jitney reach | Rahway and Woodbridge train stations |
More than $86 million in federal and state grants has been secured, including a $5.38 million award from the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority announced in January 2026, a $30 million state commitment, a $1.9 million Urban Enterprise Zone Authority award for the retail space inside the terminal, and a $5 million grant from the Carteret Business Partnership paid out at $1 million per year over five years. Interim construction financing is being provided by the New Jersey Infrastructure Bank while grant reimbursements process.
The last time Carteret had scheduled ferry service to New York was the 1950s. The terminal itself is being designed with restaurant, retail, and event space inside the building, which is why it matters that Lab X and LVLZ are opening now rather than waiting. The dining anchor for a commuter's Friday evening walk-off is being built in parallel with the boat.
A Saturday That Uses Both Ends
The point of stitching the waterfront and Washington Avenue together is that you can now build a day that moves between them without a car.
- Mid-morning at Waterfront Park. Walk the mile of brick path, take the pier out to the fishing station, and if the weather is right, play a round of mini golf for less than what a coffee costs downtown.
- Lunch off the mobile kitchen if there is a Concerts by the Bay date or festival on the calendar, or a short drive to Washington Avenue if not.
- Afternoon along the northern Riverwalk section as it opens toward Noes Creek. Watch construction progress on the ferry terminal from a distance. That is a real reason to come back monthly. The building is going up in front of you.
- Dinner on Washington Avenue. OU LA if you want a longer sit-down, Lab X if you want the DJ and the later kitchen, LVLZ once the rooftop opens.
- A show at the Performing Arts and Events Center, or a late drink and back home.
None of the individual pieces are secret. What is new is that they now connect.
What This Means For Someone Who Lives Here
The honest read on Carteret right now is that the Borough is compressing what would ordinarily be a decade of civic development into roughly three years. The Waterfront Park upgrades were finished in early 2025. The Performing Arts and Events Center is programming a full 2026 concert calendar. Two Washington Avenue restaurants opened or announced within the same twelve-month window. The ferry terminal broke ground in December 2025 and is on a 24-month construction clock.
If you moved here five years ago, your mental map of the borough is already out of date. If you have lived here twenty years, the block between the marina and the Goethals Bridge is not the block you remember. Neither is Washington Avenue.
That is the whole story worth telling your out-of-town cousin. Everything else on the internet about "things to do in Carteret" is describing a version of the borough that stopped existing sometime in 2024.
If you're a homeowner watching this transformation from your block and wondering what it means for the value of what you already own, that's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks Carteret specifically rather than Middlesex County generally. Joe DeVizio and the team work these micro-markets every week. Curious where your home stands in a borough that is genuinely changing shape? Start with a real number: What's My Home Worth?
