Verona
If you want to fall in love with Verona, take a walk though lovely Verona Park, a 54 acre county park in the center of the town. On warm days, the park’s playground is filled with children, business people having lunch and pedal boats on Verona Lake that is at the center of the park. The lake is stocked with trout for fishing and surrounded by paths for walking, jogging or bicycling. If the winters are cold enough, the lake is a picture perfect ice skating scene. Homes surrounding the park are among the town’s most desirable and of course most expensive.
Verona Township, which will celebrate its centennial in 2007, was officially formed in 1907 when Verona seceded from nearby Caldwell. The town encompasses 2.7 square miles and is home to about 14,000 residents. Bloomfield Avenue runs east to west through the well-kept, turn of the century downtown business district. Homes to the north of Bloomfield Avenue tend to be somewhat less costly than those to the south of the avenue. Like the downtown, most of the town’s homes were built prior to World War II. In addition to Verona Park, residents can take advantage of Verona’s Community Pool which has an Olympic sized pool and is flanked by tennis and shuffleboard courts or the new Community Center which features a gym and a center for the elderly. There is a number of restaurants downtown including one that boasts the area’s best “gourmet” hot dogs. The largest employer in town is Annin Flag Company. Established in 1847, Annin has made flags that were used in every American war since and produces more than 1 million flags each year including those that line the front of the town’s municipal building each Memorial Day. Verona has no train station, but DeCamp Bus Lines provides service to Port Authority in midtown Manhattan.
Verona, located just to the west of Montclair, offers a small-town feeling with a fabulous town pool and a beautiful Olmstead-designed park where adults come to bike and walk, while the kids bring their fishing rods to pull sunnies out of the lake. Verona’s schools are regularly ranked highly, and the town was voted the third best place to live in the state by New Jersey Monthly magazine in 2008 (and also made the top ten in 2010). The housing stock in Verona offers lots of inventory in the $400k-$600k range—mainly charming colonials built before World War II, and lower taxes than some neighboring towns. All within a five minute drive to Montclair’s shopping and restaurants.
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