Walk the sidewalk in front of 1397 North Highland Avenue this month and you'll see a storefront in transition again. Nowak's Cantina, the tenant most recently occupying that address, is giving way to Alere, a new concept from the team behind The Chastain, the acclaimed Buckhead restaurant helmed by chef Christopher Grossman. That's not the interesting part. The interesting part is that this exact spot has now changed identity three times in roughly a decade, while the storefronts on either side of it haven't changed at all in three times that long.
That contrast, one address that can't sit still inside a block that refuses to move, is the real story of what's happening at Morningside Village right now. The murals and new crosswalks getting attention this summer are cosmetic. The pattern underneath them is not.
The block that hasn't blinked
Doc Chey's Noodle House has held its spot on North Highland for almost 30 years, according to the property owner's own account of the block, still serving the same pan-Asian noodle bowls from the same address while it becomes one of the first tenants named in this year's renovation plans. Alon's Bakery & Market has anchored its corner of the Village for roughly three decades as well. Whiskey Bird, the yakitori and New American spot with the Robata grill, has been open since around 2017, long enough that it now reads as an institution rather than a newcomer.
Add Highland Fine Wine, Highland Runners, Intown Animal Hospital and The Family Dog to that list, all named as current tenants in the property owner's own description of the center, and you have a shopping strip where six or seven storefronts have simply stayed put while entire restaurant concepts elsewhere in the city rose and closed. This is not a neighborhood retail hub churning through tenants looking for the right fit. It's a hub where the fit was found a long time ago and never really tested again.
The one address that can't sit still
Except at 1397 North Highland, where the same physical space has run through a genuinely different lineage:
| Era | Concept |
|---|---|
| Earlier era | Morningside Kitchen |
| Most recent | Nowak's Cantina |
| Opening 2027 | Alere |
Alere will bring a seasonal menu drawing on Southern European cuisine and locally sourced ingredients, with Grossman's team partnering with Summerour Architects and Smith Hanes Design on the buildout. That's a serious pairing for a neighborhood restaurant, the kind of design and culinary pedigree usually reserved for a destination address rather than a corner storefront. But the target opening is 2027, not this fall and not next spring. Residents who assume the Nowak's sign coming down means a new restaurant is imminent are looking at the wrong timeline. What's actually happening at that address right now is construction and buildout, not a grand opening.
What's actually under construction, and what's just a rendering
The rest of Morningside Village is undergoing a separate, parallel change. Property owner 26th Street Partners has announced plans to refresh the roughly 50,000-square-foot center that straddles North Highland Avenue, adding new lighting, landscaping, paint, awnings and artist murals. The stated goal, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's coverage of the project, is to improve wayfinding and create distinct crosswalks that make the Village read as one cohesive district rather than a loose collection of buildings that happen to share a parking lot.
That distinction matters for anyone walking through this fall. The paint, awnings and landscaping are physical work that can show up on a storefront in weeks. The crosswalks and wayfinding signage are a slower, more coordinated phase. And the marquee restaurant that will anchor the renovated identity of the block won't open for another year or more. If you're expecting one unveiling, expect instead a rolling series of smaller changes, a repainted awning here, new planters there, well before anything looks finished.
Two current tenants have already been named in early renderings shared with the AJC: Doc Chey's, a tenant for almost thirty years, and Whiskey Bird, both shown getting a green color scheme, new signage and small awning updates. That the owner chose to visually upgrade its longest-standing tenants first, rather than lead with the flashier incoming restaurant, tells you something about the strategy here. The stability is the asset. The renovation is designed to make that stability more visible, not to replace it.
The rhythms that don't wait for construction
None of this touches the parts of Morningside Village that operate on their own separate calendar. The Morningside Farmers Market runs every Saturday morning, year round, at Morningside Presbyterian Church, and has done so since 1995, making it the state's original all-organic market. It doesn't pause for a renovation schedule. Neither does the annual Morningside Wine Walk, which turns the Village into a strolling tasting event benefiting a local animal rescue, or the Concerts in the Park series the Morningside Lenox Park Association runs at Sidney Marcus Park each spring and summer.
These are the events that actually define daily life here, and they're worth keeping on your radar independent of anything happening to the storefronts. If you haven't been to a Saturday morning market run in the same spot for over thirty years, that continuity is itself worth experiencing, especially while the retail strip around it is mid-transformation.
What to actually watch for this fall
If you live in Morningside, here's the practical read on the next several months. Expect the visible changes, the paint, the awnings, the landscaping, to appear gradually on the businesses that have already been there for decades. Expect the crosswalks and unified signage to take longer, since that phase requires more coordination across the whole property. Do not expect Alere to open this year or even next spring. And do not expect Doc Chey's, Alon's, Whiskey Bird or any of the other long-tenured businesses to go anywhere. The renovation is built around keeping them, not replacing them.
The real lesson in watching one address cycle through three restaurant concepts while the rest of the block hasn't turned over in a generation is that Morningside Village was never actually unstable. It just had one visible seam, one storefront that kept testing new ideas while everything around it quietly proved the concept was already right. Now that seam is finally getting the same design attention as everything else, which is less a transformation than a long-overdue acknowledgment of what residents already knew.
If you're weighing what a home near this kind of walkable, slow-changing commercial corridor is actually worth, that's a longer conversation, and one where local nuance matters more than a listing sheet. Sonny Jones works with buyers and sellers across Morningside and the surrounding Intown neighborhoods who want that kind of grounded, on-the-ground read before they make a move. Request a private consultation when you're ready to talk specifics.
