Drive down Corporate Drive on a Friday around 7 p.m. and you'll find a valet stand outside a building that used to be extended-stay suites and not much else. Head eight-tenths of a mile down to Merrick Avenue and the lot behind a 237-unit apartment building is already full, and a good chunk of those cars belong to people who don't live there.
That's not an accident of foot traffic. It's the byproduct of two apartment buildings, built by the same developer, competing with each other over who can attach the better restaurant to their lobby. Westbury residents are the ones eating well because of it.
Two buildings, one developer, one very short stretch of road
The Vanderbilt sits at 990 Corporate Drive. The Beechwood Organization built it as an $85 million luxury apartment-hotel, opening with 195 units split between 178 rental apartments and 17 extended-stay suites. Eight-tenths of a mile away on Merrick Avenue, the same developer built The Selby, a 237-unit complex on 5.87 acres directly across from Eisenhower Park, with occupancy beginning in the fall of 2022.
Two buildings from one builder, a short drive apart, both selling the same pitch to renters: this is what refined Long Island living looks like. Beechwood's own principal put it plainly when The Selby opened.
"The most refined tastes in sophisticated apartment living to be found east of New York City."
You don't back up a claim like that with a fitness center and a rooftop deck alone. You back it up with a restaurant nobody has to leave the property to find. That's exactly what happened, twice, on the same corridor, over the past two years.
The corridor, mapped by opening date
| Restaurant | Location | Opened |
|---|---|---|
| The Shed | The Selby, 685 Merrick Ave | May 2024 |
| The Farm Italy | Next to The Selby, 725 Merrick Ave | September 20, 2025 |
| The Comet Club | The Vanderbilt, 990 Corporate Drive | April 13, 2026 |
| City Cellar Wine Bar & Grill | 1080 Corporate Drive | Long-running anchor, predates the recent openings |
Read that table as a timeline and the pattern gets obvious. The Selby got its restaurant first. Sixteen months later it got a second one next door. Seven months after that, The Vanderbilt answered with its own. This isn't a neighborhood organically growing a food scene. It's two landlords one-upping each other, and the rest of Westbury got invited along.
Why a developer needs a chef
Here's the part that explains the whole corridor. A one-bedroom at The Vanderbilt currently lists at $5,800 a month, as of this summer. The average rent across all of Westbury sits at $3,886 a month. That's not a small premium. It's a developer asking renters to pay roughly 49 percent more than the neighborhood average, and the case for that premium can't rest on square footage alone.
So Beechwood recruited chef Jesse Schenker, a two-time James Beard Award nominee, and Claudia Taglich of Oyster Bay's Lush Life Group, to open The Comet Club inside The Vanderbilt this spring. Steven Dubb, the company's principal, said the goal outright when the restaurant opened.
"We want to give our residents and guests an elegant and exclusive dining experience possible only at The Vanderbilt."
That's an amenity built to justify a rent number, and it happens to be open to the public seven nights a week. The Selby ran the same play a year earlier when it brought in restaurateur John Tunney, first for The Shed, then for a second Tunney concept, The Farm Italy, built next door.
What's actually different at each stop
The Shed leans casual and does not take reservations. It's first come, first served, with a patio that welcomes dogs and an all-day menu that runs brunch dishes alongside dinner options from open to close.
The Farm Italy is the more formal sibling. It seats about 150 across two dining rooms with two indoor fireplaces and a skylight-lit bar, plus another 70 seats on a covered outdoor terrace with its own fire pit. The menu mirrors the Huntington flagship that made Tunney's name locally: Branzino in burro bianco, Pappardelle Bolognese, a Double R Ranch NY Strip, and the restaurant's signature Cacio e Pepe.
The Comet Club is the newest and the most theatrical of the three. The design mixes Gilded Age New York with 1920s Havana and Miami, and the room includes a 12-seat bar and piano lounge built for a martini and oysters before or after a full meal. Bar service starts at 4 p.m., dinner service begins at 5, and the kitchen runs until 9:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Valet parking is available, which tells you something about who the room was designed for.
City Cellar, meanwhile, is the one restaurant on this stretch that isn't tied to a residential lease. It anchors 1080 Corporate Drive with brick-oven pizza, steaks, and seafood from a 500-label wine cellar, running independent of the amenity race unfolding around it.
A weeknight you can actually build around it
Because these four spots sit within less than a mile of each other, a Westbury resident can string together an evening without leaving Corporate Drive or Merrick Avenue.
- Start with a drink at The Comet Club's piano bar before 5 p.m., when bar service opens but the dining room hasn't filled yet.
- Walk or drive the eight-tenths of a mile to The Selby complex for dinner, choosing between The Farm Italy's fireplace-lit dining room or The Shed's more casual, dog-friendly patio.
- If the wait at either Selby restaurant runs long on a weekend, City Cellar at 1080 Corporate Drive is the fallback with the deepest wine list on the block.
None of that requires a reservation at a Manhattan restaurant group's outpost or a drive to Garden City. It's sitting inside what most Westbury residents still think of as an office park.
What this actually changes
The easy version of this story is "Westbury got some new restaurants." The more useful version is that Westbury got them because two landlords are competing for renters willing to pay a premium, and the entry fee for that competition turned out to be a serious kitchen. Neither building needed foot traffic to justify the investment. They needed a lease-signing renter to believe the address came with a five-star restaurant attached, and that restaurant happens to take walk-ins from anyone else on the block.
That's worth knowing next time someone asks what's new in Westbury, because the honest answer isn't a strip mall or a downtown revival. It's an amenities war between two apartment buildings less than a mile apart, and the dinner reservation is the only receipt you need.
If you're already living in Westbury and keeping an eye on how the neighborhood keeps shifting, that kind of local read is exactly what Singh's Team tracks block by block. Whether you're weighing a move, curious what your home is worth in today's market, or just want a team that knows this corridor as well as its listings, reach out for a free home valuation and a conversation grounded in what's actually happening here, not a national headline.
