For most of the last decade, the short stretch of North Highland Avenue that residents call Morningside Village has behaved like a strip: a Saturday market on one side of the street, a rotating restaurant address on the other, and a handful of anchors that never seemed to change. That framing is getting outdated in real time. Two announcements landed within a week of each other in late June and early July, and together they turn the seam between 1393 and 1397 North Highland into the most interesting piece of sidewalk in the neighborhood this summer.
The thesis is simple. What is changing in Morningside Village in 2026 is not the tenant list. It is the frame around the tenant list. A new owner is redrawing the district at the crosswalk level, and a Buckhead-caliber kitchen is quietly committing to a 2027 address on the opposite curb. Residents who read those two moves together will get a truer picture of the block than residents who read either one alone.
The Landlord Just Redrew the District
On July 6, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that 26th Street Partners, an Atlanta real estate investment firm on a buying spree, is spending down a face-lift plan for the roughly 50,000-square-foot collection of buildings that straddles North Highland as Morningside Village. The scope reads modest on paper: new lighting, landscaping, paint, awnings, and artist murals. The interesting piece is buried further down. The owner also intends to improve wayfinding and add what it describes as distinct crosswalks to define the village as a cohesive district.
That last detail is the one to sit with. Morningside Village has always functioned as two adjacent parcels split by a fairly busy piece of North Highland. The market side sits at 1393. The restaurant row sits across the street at and around 1397. Residents already walk between them, but the walk currently reads as a jaywalk, not a stitched sequence. If the crosswalks land as described, the practical effect is that a Saturday visit stops feeling like two errands and starts feeling like one loop.
The tenant list the owner is refreshing around includes Whiskey Bird, The Family Dog, and Doc Chey's Noodle House on the restaurant side, with Highland Fine Wine, Highland Runners, and Intown Animal Hospital rounding out the mix. Doc Chey's has held its space in the center for close to thirty years, a detail worth naming because it explains why the refresh is happening around long-term tenants rather than through them. The rendering circulated by the design firm Gentle Works shows patio expansions at Whiskey Bird and Vidalia, awning changes, and a green sign scheme that pulls the two sides of the street into one visual vocabulary.
The read for residents: this is not a redevelopment. It is a rebranding of the walk.
1397 Is the Address to Watch
One week earlier, on June 29, the AJC ran a separate story that put the other half of the picture in place. Chef Christopher Grossman and the team behind The Chastain, the acclaimed Buckhead restaurant off West Paces Ferry, announced a second concept called Alere. It will open in 2027 in the space at 1397 North Highland Avenue NE most recently occupied by Nowak's Cantina.
Two things about that address matter for a Morningside resident.
The first is history. In roughly ten years, 1397 has cycled through Morningside Kitchen, Nowak's steakhouse, Nowak's Cantina, and now a signed lease for Alere. That is a fast rotation for a Village address, and it means the space has been the neighborhood's most volatile piece of restaurant real estate for the better part of a decade. A 2027 opening from a chef with a Buckhead track record is a different kind of commitment than a rebrand or a pivot. What Now Atlanta reported that the design work is going to Summerour Architects and Smith Hanes Design, both of whom sit comfortably in the upper tier of local restaurant fit-outs. The menu is expected to draw from Southern European cuisine, built on locally sourced ingredients and classical technique.
The second is the interregnum. Alere does not open until 2027. That leaves summer 2026 and most of 2027 as a quiet window at 1397. Residents planning around dinner rotations should assume the address goes dark, or nearly dark, through the construction. In practice, that means the restaurant weight of the Village shifts across the street and one door down while the anchor slot gets rebuilt. It also means the streetscape improvements arrive on a curb that will spend the next eighteen months preparing for a fine-dining address, not competing with one.
Two independent announcements. One landlord scale. One kitchen scale. Same crosswalk.
The Saturday Clock Still Runs the Week
The fixed piece in all of this is the Morningside Farmers Market at Morningside Presbyterian Church, 1393 North Highland. It has run every Saturday morning since 1995. Hours are 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. Produce is certified organic or grown to naturally grown standards, with other vendor products at least 85 percent organic. Chef demos run at 9:30 a.m. from April through November, a detail Atlanta Magazine has covered for years. Flagship vendors include Crystal Organic, whose farmer Nicolas Donck is known for keeping delicate salad greens and cool-season vegetables going deeper into the summer than most farms manage.
The market is also one of the metro's cleanest SNAP redemption points. Rough Draft Atlanta covered the 2026 farmers market lineup in March and noted that Morningside matches SNAP and EBT dollars for a bonus dollar on fruits and vegetables at the bright orange tent, through the Wholesome Wave Georgia Fresh for Less program.
The reason to keep the market in mind while thinking about the face-lift is that the market is the piece the crosswalks are being drawn toward. If a resident lands at 1393 at 8:45 a.m. for early greens at Crystal Organic, catches the 9:30 chef demo, and then wants to cross the street for coffee, that walk is currently informal. It is about to become the point of the redesign. A Saturday in September 2026 will not look radically different from a Saturday in September 2025 at the vendor level. It will feel different at the sidewalk level.
What Stays Fixed on the Rest of the Walk
Because the changes are concentrated on one seam, most of the neighborhood food map holds. A few names worth keeping straight for the summer:
- Doc Chey's Noodle House. The Village's longest-tenured tenant. Roughly thirty years in the center. The refresh is being built around it, not through it.
- Whiskey Bird. Asian-flavored yakitori and sliders. Getting a patio adjustment as part of the landlord's plan.
- The Family Dog. A neighborhood bar that has quietly done a lot of the block's evening lifting.
- Highland Fine Wine and Highland Runners. The retail spine. Both are staying.
- Alon's Bakery and Market. Not inside Morningside Village proper, but the resident food map does not work without it. Still the anchor bakery on this stretch of North Highland.
- The Buttery. A small Morningside bakeshop from the Holeman and Finch team, useful for desserts and prepared foods.
- Nino's. Old-school Italian off Cheshire Bridge, a short drive rather than a walk, worth naming because it is the neighborhood's least-discussed dining tradition.
The Morningside Nature Preserve and the residential streets running west of North Highland Avenue do not need updating this season, but they explain why the district face-lift matters at all. The Village is the commercial handle on an otherwise residential neighborhood. Sharpen the handle, and the whole neighborhood grips better.
The Read for the Rest of 2026
Two clocks are running side by side. The landlord clock is set to fall 2026 for the visible pieces of the face-lift, based on the project timeline shared with the AJC. The kitchen clock at 1397 is set to sometime in 2027 for Alere's opening. Between those two dates, the Village will spend a year and a half looking better than it did in 2025 while running a lighter dinner rotation than usual across the street.
The practical move for a resident this summer is to treat the market side as the fixed foot and the restaurant side as the variable foot. Anchor the week on Saturday morning at 1393. Read Whiskey Bird, The Family Dog, and Doc Chey's as the current dinner rotation. Note 1397 as an address that will re-enter the conversation in 2027 with more weight than it has carried in a decade. Watch the crosswalks. When they are painted and lit the way the rendering shows, the Village will finally read as one place rather than two.
That is the story the June and July announcements tell when they are read together. Not a restaurant story. Not a real estate story. A sidewalk story.
If you live in Morningside and are thinking about what this next chapter of the Village means for your address, or if you are considering a move within the Intown neighborhoods and want a clearer read on how the block-by-block changes are shaping value, the team at Home Luxury Real Estate is happy to talk. Contact us for a conversation that starts with the walk, not the listing.
