Bella Princess Cafe at the corner of Bloomfield and Lakeside is closing following a July 9 decision by the Verona Board of Adjustment that rescinded a permit to operate that it granted the business in 2022.
The business’ owners, Martha Peralta and her daughter Karissa Teixeira, made the announcement on Instagram on Saturday. The café opened in Verona in late 2023, but the company started a themed events business in Bloomfield before that.
Bella Princess Cafe, located at 553 Bloomfield Avenue in Verona’s Town Center zone, hosted private themed parties featuring princess characters that it said, despite visual similarity to Disney princesses, were drawn from old fables and legends. While the café’s hours are currently listed on the website as open 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. two days a week with reservations, it operates as a private event space or ticketed event space all other days.
The distinction between a café that’s regularly open to the general public and a space that primarily hosts events is important because Verona’s town code expressly prohibits event spaces in the town center. (For those interested, refer to the section of code covering the Town Center Zone, § 150-17.14, B. The principal permitted uses, and F. Prohibited uses.) Nevertheless, materials submitted to the Board of Adjustment by Bella Princess Cafe say that it was given a permit to operate, labelled 2022-275. This permit and any documents that might have been submitted with regard to the business do not appear in the Board of Adjustment archives for 2022. (Unlike the archive of Town Council minutes and agendas, there is a multiyear gap in the Board of Adjustment records online.)
Verona’s zoning official in 2022 was Michael DeCarlo, who is now employed by the Borough of Caldwell.
Why did Verona rescind the Bella permit?
It’s not clear. There have been no reported disturbances at the café. In 2025, an event space that had operated directly across the street, Palmetto Venues, was closed after the shooting of four people in the parking lot behind it on Saturday, March 15.
At the time, Verona said it had been conducting a zoning review of the Palmetto property and had determined that Palmetto had been improperly given a zoning permit and certificate of occupancy by a former zoning official. The zoning official at the time of Palmetto’s application was Phillip Epps.
Palmetto was given the opportunity to seek a zoning variance to resume operations, and while it did appear before the Board of Adjustment, the variance was denied. Palmetto’s owners have since filed a lawsuit against Verona.
After Bella got permit 2022-275 to use the first-floor space for retail service (which is permitted in the town center), it filed a zoning application in February 2023 for a change to host private themed parties. While the Board of Adjustment found that its proposed use did not fall under any of the permitted or conditional uses in the Town Center zone, it noted that it had granted the property’s owner, Joseph Valente, permission to use the first floor for retail in August 2020 and then granted Valente, the owner of a Verona plumbing business, and Peralta permission to operate a “mixed use” business. (The location had been a sports equipment retailer for decades.)
Then, on May 6, 2026, Verona notified Peralta by letter that it was rescinding zoning permit 2022-275; that letter has not been posted to the Board of Adjustment website. She was given the opportunity to appeal the decision at the Board of Adjustment’s July 9 meeting (not a courthouse, as Teixeira said in the social media post), where the appeal was denied. You can watch the hearing here.
What’s next for Bella and town center zoning?
Peralta and Teixeira said in their social media post that they are leaving Verona. “Our only course forward was to spend tens of thousands of dollars applying for a use variance to fix a mistake that was never ours to begin with,” Teixeira said. “What was done to Bella Princess was unjust, and we intend to make sure that Verona thinks before doing this to another small business who played by every rule and spent their life savings in good faith and built something beautiful for this community.”
The mother/daughter team asked for the community’s support in liking and sharing their post — a request that was taken up, with passion, by a number of town residents, who shared the pair’s Instagram post and expressed on social media groups that they love having the business in town. Some residents questioned why the town handled the issue in this manner, and what effect this course of action might have on future small businesses coming to town.
The Bella owners said that they will continue to offer off-site party packages through their website, and made an appeal to a realtor in Morris or Essex counties to help them find a new cafe space “where we are wanted.” They did not say that they will be filing a lawsuit against Verona, but said that “there will be more to share.”
Verona has been making changes to zoning rules in recent years. Co-working spaces are now permitted in the town center zone, as are brewpubs. But houses of worship and nightclubs are still out downtown, and there has been no move to allow event spaces to operate. The decision against Bella Princess Cafe also begs the question as to whether Verona will be reviewing other zoning decisions made by Epps and DeCarlo.
MyVeronaNJ.com will continue to follow this story and report back with any updates.
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