Walk the short stretch of Locust Place behind Beaver Street on a weekend evening and you will find two restaurants sharing one courtyard: Torogoz, serving Latin American plates, and Moonlit Burgers, doing smash burgers and shakes a few doors down. Both have been open since last September. What has not arrived yet is the third tenant the courtyard's developer said he was seeking when it opened, or the shared event space above Torogoz he expected to follow.
The courtyard still has room to fill, and this fall offers a look at what is happening around it.
What's Actually There, and What Isn't
The courtyard was built by Sam DiBattista, who also owns Vivo Kitchen in Sewickley, with financing from Chuck Hammel, president of Pitt Ohio. Architectural designer David Saint Jacques of dsjDESIGN handled the buildout. Torogoz is run by Julio Peraza, a chef born in El Salvador and raised in Southern California who came to Pittsburgh in 2018 as executive chef at fl.2 in the Fairmont Hotel. Peraza also owns Mi Cita, a cocktail and wine bar with small bites on Beaver Street, so the courtyard isn't his only stake in the village. Moonlit Burgers, meanwhile, is a small local chain with existing locations in Dormont and on the Duquesne University campus in Uptown, and the Sewickley storefront was its first move into the northwestern suburbs.
A third concept, a ramen shop, was part of the original plan and fell through during the buildout, which is part of why the whole project took longer to open than expected. When Beaver County Radio covered the opening last September, DiBattista said he was still looking for a new tenant to fill that space and expected the shared event space above Torogoz to open before long. Public listings for the courtyard, as recently updated as this past July, still show only the two restaurants. No third name, no event space announcement.
What Else Is Taking Shape Near Beaver Street
While the courtyard waits on its next tenant, two other projects nearby have taken shape this year.
Giant Eagle opened a standalone pharmacy at 517 Beaver Street this spring, taking over the spot left empty when Rite Aid closed. Giant Eagle's senior director of public relations, Dan Donovan, said at the time that the company "understood that the closure of the Rite Aid created a need for access to convenient care." The new location carries groceries, over-the-counter items, and walk-in immunizations alongside the pharmacy counter, filling a service gap the borough had been without for months.
Down the street, Orbital Engineering founder Bob Lewis, a Sewickley resident, is relocating his company's headquarters from Pittsburgh into a new mixed-use building on Beaver Street. Borough council approved the conditional use application in a 6-1 vote last year, and the project pairs office space with residential units and ground-floor retail. L&L Builders co-founder Mike Lewandowski described the fit plainly during the approval process, saying "Sewickley is a place where a lot of people do want to live and work and play." Construction has been underway since last spring, with a grand opening goal of December 2026, which would put move-in roughly on schedule for an 18-month build.
Both projects have a public target date. The courtyard's remaining space has not had a tenant announced yet.
The Village's Calendar Kept Its Pace
The rest of Sewickley's fall rhythm ran on schedule too. The Sewickley Valley Chamber of Commerce closed out its 2026 Night Mart series on August 28, the last of three dates that ran through the summer. This year the Chamber expanded the footprint down Walnut Street in addition to Beaver Street to make room for more vendors, and each Night Mart draws an average of more than 3,000 people between the live music, food trucks, and artisan tables.
The Harvest Festival followed two weeks later. This was the 35th year for the event, held September 12 with more than 140 vendors lining Beaver Street, and Macaroni Kid Pittsburgh North calls it plainly the "official kickoff to Fall in Sewickley." Merchant sidewalk sales ran alongside it, turning the weekend into more than just the festival itself.
Underneath both of those, Thursday Night Live keeps running every week, with shops staying open until 7 p.m. so anyone stopping by after work has time to actually browse before dinner.
One Saturday in October Is Doing Double Duty
The next real marker on the calendar lands October 17, and it happens to be two events on the same day rather than one.
Sweetwater Center for the Arts holds its market on the third Saturday of every month, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., with artisan, food, and floral vendors supporting local sellers. October's third Saturday falls on the 17th this year. That same evening, the Chamber's Fall Music Festival takes over Fern Hollow Nature Center from 4 to 9 p.m., with food trucks, activities for kids, and the band No Bad Juju already booked to headline what the Chamber is calling the biggest event of the fall.
A morning at Sweetwater and an evening at Fern Hollow are two different venues, two different crowds, and one calendar square. That makes October 17 a full day in the village, with the market in the morning and the festival at night.
Much of the village's fall is already on the calendar. A pharmacy now occupies 517 Beaver Street after Rite Aid closed, an engineering firm has a Beaver Street building underway with a stated opening goal, and the Chamber has run three Night Marts and a 35th annual festival with a headliner booked for October. The courtyard on Locust Place sits alongside all of it, with two restaurants open and space still to fill.
Torogoz and Moonlit Burgers are both open. The sources available as of this writing do not include a public update on the third tenant or the event space above Torogoz.
If the slow half of Sewickley's newest courtyard has you curious about what else is changing within a few blocks of Beaver Street, reach out to Robin Taylor Homes for a rundown of what's currently listed in the village.
