SouthPark's 2026 Retail Reset Didn't Add a Single Restaurant. Here's Where the Neighborhood Went Instead.

Walk past Sharon Square on a Tuesday at 11 p.m. and you'll find The Craic still pouring, its patio half full of people who came for a late dinner and stayed for the second round. Walk the same distance into SouthPark Mall and the lights are already dimmed, the escalators still, the Dining Pavilion locked for the night. That gap in the evening, ten minutes apart on the same half mile, tells you more about what changed here in 2026 than any single opening or closing does on its own.

SouthPark Mall spent this year adding stores. It did not add a single kitchen.

Five New Leases, Zero New Kitchens

In February, SouthPark Mall's owner, Simon Property Group, announced five new tenants slated to open by the end of 2026: TileBar, a design-focused wall and floor tile retailer, at The Village at SouthPark; Suitsupply, opening next to Belk; Garage, a women's apparel brand, debuting near the Dining Pavilion; a relocated and expanded Arhaus showroom landing between Michael Kors and Coach; and a multi-brand watch boutique in the Luxury Wing carrying IWC Schaffhausen, Panerai and Jaeger-LeCoultre, operated through a joint venture with Material Good.

Look at that list again. Tile. Suiting. Apparel. Furniture. Watches. Every one of the mall's 2026 additions sells something you take home, not something you sit down and eat. That is not an accident of timing. It is a strategy. Simon's own language around the expansion leaned entirely on "elevated fashion" and "interior design inspiration," and the announcement made no mention of a restaurant, café or bar joining the roster. If you have been waiting for a new dinner option inside the enclosed mall itself, 2026 was not the year.

Just Outside the Doors, the Kitchens Reopened for Different Reasons

The neighborhood's actual restaurant growth happened outside the mall's four walls, in the open-air centers that ring it. The Craic opened April 15 in the former Rusty Bucket space at Sharon Square, built as an all-day gathering spot serving brunch through late night, open until 2 a.m. with food service running until 1.

"We wanted to create a place that feels welcoming from the moment you arrive," says co-owner and general manager Parker Starre.

A few minutes away on Congress Street, Laurel Park took over the space long occupied by Village Tavern, another full-service restaurant filling a slot that had anchored that stretch for years. SouthPark's own business district organization lists Tommy Bahama Marlin Bar and Salted Melon Market & Eatery among the district's newest dining openings as of its most recent update in March. At Specialty Shops SouthPark, Renaissance Patisserie expanded into a larger kitchen with more seating and a dedicated takeout counter, a bet that the neighborhood's appetite for French pastry has outgrown its original footprint.

Meanwhile, the churn cut the other way for smaller retailers. Fontana di Vino closed its SouthPark location at Sharon Square this year, though its Davidson restaurant stayed open, a sign that the concept works better as a single destination than a two-location bet inside this particular retail mix. Ivy & Leo, a women's clothing boutique, left its longtime space at Specialty Shops SouthPark for Sharon Corners, taking over the former Swoozie's spot. KK Bloom closed its Selwyn Avenue storefront entirely after sixteen years, shifting its business online rather than renewing a physical lease.

Here is the pattern once you line it up: the enclosed mall is consolidating around luxury goods that reward a destination trip, while the boutiques and kitchens built for daily, walk-in traffic are migrating to Sharon Square and Sharon Corners, the pockets of SouthPark designed to be crossed on foot rather than parked at.

If you live in SouthPark and want to know where the neighborhood's evening life actually is this year, the answer is not the mall's Dining Pavilion. It is the sidewalk in front of Sharon Square.

The Loop That Doesn't Need a Storefront

A short drive north, Myers Park ran its own version of a neighborhood event this summer, and it needed no retail space at all. The 25th edition of 24 Hours of Booty took over the Booty Loop from 7 p.m. Friday, July 24 through 7 p.m. Saturday, July 25, a continuous, police-secured route along Queens Road West, Hopedale Avenue, Queens Road and Selwyn Avenue. Riders and walkers set their own mileage and came and went from Bootyville, the event's headquarters at Queens University of Charlotte, as many times as they wanted over the full 24 hours.

Last year's event raised just shy of $1.7 million for cancer navigation and survivorship programs. Across its history, the event has now raised more than $33 million, according to the 24 Foundation, entirely from a course that runs through front yards and requires zero commercial square footage. No lease, no buildout, no menu. Just three miles of residential street that Myers Park hands over once a year, and neighbors who show up to cheer, ride or hand out water from their own driveways.

Compare that to what it took to open The Craic, or to relocate Arhaus, or to build out a multi-brand watch boutique. Those projects needed capital, permits, buildout timelines measured in months. The Booty Loop needed a closed street and twenty-five years of the same neighborhood agreeing to keep showing up. That is a different kind of infrastructure, and it is the one piece of this year's SouthPark and Myers Park story that didn't depend on a single retail lease changing hands.

What This Actually Means If You Live Here

None of these three storylines happened by coordination. Simon Property Group was not thinking about Sharon Square's kitchen turnover when it signed a watch retailer. The 24 Foundation was not thinking about Arhaus when it mapped the Booty Loop route decades ago. But laid side by side, they describe a neighborhood sorting itself into distinct zones by function: the enclosed mall as a destination for things you buy once and keep, the open-air centers as the place daily life actually happens over dinner, and the residential streets of Myers Park as the site of the one gathering that needs no storefront at all.

If you're planning a Friday night, that split is worth knowing before you drive to the mall expecting a new place to eat. If you're a longtime Ivy & Leo or Fontana di Vino customer, it's worth knowing your favorite spot didn't disappear so much as relocate to where the neighborhood's foot traffic actually goes. And if you missed the Booty Loop this July, know that it already marked twenty-five years of proof that some of the best things about living here still don't require a single new store to open.

For more on what's shifting in SouthPark and Myers Park, or if you're ever curious what any of this means for your own street, Nelvia Bullock is always glad to talk through it. Let's talk about your next move.