Tag: South Downtown

Inspired by family history and the legacy of Southern gathering spots, Mike and Shyretha Sheats—founders of the Plate Sale pop-up—will bring a Southern-leaning restaurant called Mule Train to South Downtown in the spring. It will find its home on Broad Street, offering both lunch and dinner, and featuring a full bar.

A new record store has opened in the heart of downtown Atlanta. CratesATL — a new offering from Darryl Harris, owner of Moods Music in Little Five Points — on Mitchell Street’s Historic Hotel Row, opened its doors this past spring, adding a new rhythm to the area’s growing mix of local businesses. The shop joins a wave of revitalization efforts reshaping South Downtown, bringing music, culture, and community to one of the city’s most storied streets.

When Smorgasburg first opened in Brooklyn, New York, in 2011, it was an under-the-radar food festival you had to be in-the-know to attend. Nowadays, it attracts thousands of visitors to set locations in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. On October 18, it will make its debut in Atlanta. Set in South Downtown, it will run on Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., rain or shine. Here's a sampling of what to expect.

Chef Todd Ginsberg is teaming up with Bloom Roadside founder Josh Kim once again—this time, on the opposite side of town. The duo has been operating the cafe and yeast doughnut shop together in Alpharetta since 2022. Come April, they plan to open a counter-service restaurant in South Downtown. Originally planned as a diner, it will serve all-day breakfast, as well as sandwiches, salads, and soups—and Kim’s sour cream doughnuts.

In 2011, Jonathan Butler and Eric Demby launched a food festival/market designed to foster community in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. Called Smorgasburg—a combination of “smorgasbord” and “Williamsburg”—it features a carefully curated group of food vendors, along with music and beverages. Since then, the weekly event has grown immensely, bringing approximately 50,000 people to Brooklyn, Miami, and Los Angeles. Starting in October, Atlanta will join that list, welcoming Smorgasburg to South Downtown.

The team behind Sammy’s in Adair Park is working on a new venture called Broad Street BBQ, slated to open in spring 2026. Located across from the planned El Tesoro, Broad Street will feature a full-service smokehouse with counter-service barbecue, a to-go window, and a craft cocktail bar. It's the brainchild of Jason Furst and Sam Pinner, whose culinary partnership dates back to a pandemic-era stint smoking meats on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

What Newport had toiled for seven years to accumulate took David Cummings less than two months to purchase, through deals with seven different lenders. As of this writing, Atlanta Ventures’ new LLC, SoDo Atlanta, now owns all of Newport’s former holdings, save one. Cummings isn’t disclosing yet what he paid for such a hefty chunk of downtown, but says he’s pleased with the sale price: “You never know what something’s worth, [but] it feels good right now.”

An expanded version of the Thai stall from Chattahoochee Food Works is the first restaurant to open in Newport’s redeveloped Historic Hotel Row downtown.

The excitement about new development obscures an awkward fact that the city and developers have to reckon with: Downtown already has more buildings than it has people who want to occupy them. It already has more road, rail, and bus capacity than any eastern U.S. downtown south of Washington, D.C. On weekdays, there are plenty of people there. The problem is that, at 5 p.m. on Fridays, the place clears out. Downtown Atlanta is often filled with a large, diverse group of people, but not many of them are residents.

Hard to keep all the numbered buildings and buzzwords straight? Here’s a quick guide to what’s proposed, what’s underway, and what might have been.