"Distinct crosswalks to clearly define the village as a cohesive district." That's the language the property owner used when describing what's coming to Morningside Village this year, and it's the kind of phrase that sounds like it belongs on a rendering board rather than a strip of North Highland Avenue that hasn't changed its skin in decades. But that's exactly what 26th Street Partners, the Atlanta real estate investment firm that owns the roughly 50,000-square-foot collection of buildings straddling North Highland, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this summer. New lighting. New landscaping. Fresh paint and awnings. Artist murals. And yes, crosswalks designed to make the whole stretch read as one place instead of a scattered row of storefronts.
If you live in Morningside or Lenox Park, you've probably walked past this strip a thousand times without thinking about it as a single project. That's the point. For most residents, Morningside Village has simply been the place with Doc Chey's, the place where a restaurant occasionally changes names, and the place two blocks from the farmers market. This year, for the first time in a long while, it's actually becoming a project, and the interesting part isn't the murals. It's what the ownership group chose to invest in alongside them.
The Storefront That Keeps Changing Its Name
Walk to 1397 North Highland Avenue and you're standing in front of a space with more names than most Morningside residents can keep straight. Over roughly the past decade, that same address has been Morningside Kitchen, then Nowak's, then Nowak's Cantina. Each version lasted a few years before the next one moved in. It's the kind of churn that happens at a specific location rather than across a whole neighborhood, the retail equivalent of a chair that never quite fits whoever sits in it.
The next occupant is Alere, a restaurant from Chef Christopher Grossman, the same chef behind The Chastain. According to the announcement, Alere will lean into what Grossman describes as an approach that sheds the formality of classical fine dining while keeping his ingredient-driven cooking intact, with a menu drawing on Southern European technique. The design work is being handled by Summerour Architects and Smith Hanes Design, both known locally for restaurant interiors that lean warm and considered rather than trendy. It's a serious team taking on a space that has not, historically, held onto a concept for long.
Here's the detail worth sitting with: Alere isn't opening this fall or even next spring. The target is 2027. That's a longer runway than most restaurant announcements get, and it means the space most recently home to Nowak's Cantina will likely sit in some state of transition for over a year before Alere's doors open. If you've been wondering whether the restaurant at that address just changed again, the honest answer is that it's about to change once more, just not on the timeline a typical opening announcement would suggest.
The Tenant That Never Left
A few doors down, the story is the opposite. Doc Chey's, the noodle house that's been part of Morningside Village for almost 30 years, isn't going anywhere. It's also getting new lighting, new landscaping, and the same paint and awning work as the rest of the strip. The rendering the ownership group shared shows Doc Chey's storefront brightened up, not replaced.
That's the part of this project that tells you something the murals alone don't. A retail face-lift usually gets framed as a bet on what's new, the incoming restaurant, the fresh concept, the thing that photographs well for an opening announcement. But 26th Street Partners is spending on Doc Chey's exterior the same year it's making room for Alere. The ownership isn't treating the block as a hand-off from an old tenant to a new one. It's treating a storefront that's turned over three times in ten years and a storefront that hasn't turned over in thirty as equally worth the investment.
For residents, that distinction matters more than it sounds. It means the version of Morningside Village that shows up after this renovation isn't a wholesale reinvention. It's the same commercial anchors, dressed better, with one new tenant filling a spot that's proven it needs a strong concept to hold.
Here's a rough sense of what's actually on the table this year, based on what the ownership group has described publicly:
- New exterior lighting and landscaping across the property
- Fresh paint and awnings, including an update for Doc Chey's storefront
- Artist murals along North Highland
- Improved wayfinding and new crosswalks meant to tie the property together visually
- A years-out restaurant change at 1397 North Highland, from Nowak's Cantina to Alere, not expected before 2027
Two of those items are cosmetic and likely visible by the end of this year or early next. One is a multi-year restaurant transition. None of it touches the market two blocks away.
What Hasn't Moved At All
While the ownership group reworks the storefronts, the Morningside Farmers Market keeps running the way it has since 1995. It's still Atlanta's organic-only market, still held on Saturday mornings, and it still matches SNAP and EBT dollars on fruit and vegetable purchases, a detail that hasn't changed even as the retail strip nearby gets new paint. If your Saturday routine is showing up early for the best produce before it sells out, nothing about this renovation touches that habit.
That contrast is worth naming directly. Morningside Village is investing in its physical presence and adjusting one long-unstable tenant slot. The market a short walk away is doing exactly what it's done for three decades, unaffected by any of it. Residents get both in the same neighborhood: a commercial strip in active transition and a Saturday morning ritual that isn't going anywhere.
What to Actually Watch For
If you want to track this without checking the AJC every month, here's the practical version. The cosmetic work, lighting, landscaping, murals, and crosswalks, is the kind of project that tends to show up in visible phases: scaffolding and paint crews first, murals and final lighting later. Expect to see it unfold gradually rather than all at once, most likely over the coming months.
The restaurant change is the slower story. Nowak's Cantina's space won't sit empty and then reopen as Alere overnight. Given the 2027 target, there's real time between now and whenever the doors open, plenty of time for the space to look unfinished, change hands on paper, or sit quiet before Grossman's team actually moves in. That's normal for a project with this kind of design team attached. It doesn't mean the plan has stalled.
And Doc Chey's, the market, and the rest of the day-to-day rhythm of the neighborhood aren't part of either timeline. They're the parts of Morningside Village that this renovation is investing in preserving, not replacing.
That's really the whole story here. Morningside Village isn't becoming a different place. It's becoming a better-maintained version of the same one, with one long-unsettled storefront finally getting a concept with real backing behind it, and everything that already worked getting a fresh coat of paint rather than a new tenant.
If you're a longtime Morningside homeowner curious about what a renovation like this tends to do for a neighborhood's character over time, or you're weighing a move into the area and want a read on how a project like this fits into the bigger picture of Buckhead-adjacent, in-town Atlanta living, Sam Bayne has spent more than two decades watching how these small shifts in a commercial corridor play out for the residential streets around them. Let's connect when you're ready to talk about what it means for your own address.
