If you have walked past Doc Chey's Noodle House lately and noticed scaffolding, or seen a rendering of new awnings taped to the window at Whiskey Bird, you already know something is happening at Morningside Village. If you have also tried to get a Thursday table at So. Fox since September, you know something else is happening a couple of miles south, on the same road.
Here is the part that is easy to miss if you only pay attention to one end of the street. Both projects trace back to the same company. North Highland Avenue is being worked on from two directions at once, by one owner, and most residents on either end have no idea the other renovation exists.
What's Changing at the Virginia-Highland End
Start where the food press has been camped out all summer. On July 2, chef Myles Moody and sommelier Rachael Pack opened So. Fox at 1017 N. Highland Ave., in the space that had been Farm Burger until it closed in 2025. It is the first full-service restaurant from the couple behind Kinship Butcher & Sundry next door, and the name is a nod to the Southern fox grape, the muscadine native to this part of Georgia.
The opening alone would have been neighborhood news. What happened on September 15 made it bigger than the neighborhood. The New York Times published its 2026 list of 50 restaurants across the country, and So. Fox was the only Georgia restaurant on it. The paper's Kim Severson focused on dishes like corn dumplings with Sungold tomatoes, blue crab and bottarga, the kind of plate that reads as a deliberate rework of what Southern food is allowed to be, served in a building that spent a century as a filling station before it ever plated a dumpling.
A block or so away, a second chef-driven project has been moving toward its own opening. Parnass Savang and Rod Lassiter, the team behind the acclaimed Summerhill Thai restaurant Talat Market, are bringing a new concept called Some Luck into the former Highland Ballroom Lounge space near Madeira Park, after delays pushed the timeline back earlier this year.
Two well-regarded chef teams choosing the same few blocks of Virginia-Highland in the same year is not an accident of scheduling. It lines up with a separate piece of news that got far less attention than the food did: the retail strip connecting these storefronts reportedly changed hands, with Atlanta real estate firm 26th Street Partners paying in the neighborhood of $17.3 million for two segments of Virginia-Highland retail space, according to Atlanta commercial broker Gene Kansas. The restaurants are the visible part. The ownership change under them is the part that explains why the visible part is happening now.
The Same Company, a Few Minutes Up the Same Avenue
Keep walking north on North Highland and you eventually reach Morningside Village, a roughly 50,000-square-foot cluster of buildings that straddles the avenue in the Morningside-Lenox Park neighborhood. It has been the neighborhood's low-key commercial spine for decades, anchored by Doc Chey's Noodle House, which has held its spot there for almost 30 years, alongside Whiskey Bird, the Family Dog, Highland Fine Wine, Highland Runners and Intown Animal Hospital.
In July, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Morningside Village's owner, 26th Street Partners, is planning a facelift: new lighting, landscaping, paint, awnings and artist murals, plus improved wayfinding and what the firm described to the paper as distinct crosswalks meant to make the property read as one cohesive district rather than a row of separate storefronts. None of the named tenants are leaving. This is a refresh of the shell around businesses that have already proven they can last.
Put the two projects side by side and the pattern is obvious once you see it, and easy to miss if you only ever walk one end of the street.
| Virginia-Highland corner | Morningside Village | |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | 26th Street Partners | 26th Street Partners |
| What's changing | New restaurant tenants (So. Fox, Some Luck) after a reported $17.3M acquisition of retail space | Facade and streetscape upgrades: lighting, landscaping, paint, awnings, murals, wayfinding, crosswalks |
| Longtime businesses | Farm Burger closed in 2025 to make room for So. Fox; Kinship Butcher & Sundry stays next door | Doc Chey's (nearly 30 years), Whiskey Bird, the Family Dog, Highland Fine Wine, Highland Runners, Intown Animal Hospital all remain |
| What drove the news | A New York Times national list, September 15, 2026 | An AJC business story on planned capital improvements, July 2026 |
Why It Matters If You Live Between the Two
Virginia-Highland and Morningside have their own civic associations, their own identities, and residents on one end rarely think much about what is happening on the other. That is normal. It is also exactly why this pattern is worth knowing. When one ownership group is investing in both ends of the same avenue in the same year, it is not treating them as two separate destinations. It is treating North Highland Avenue as one corridor with two different jobs to do: turn over the tenant mix and generate buzz at the Virginia-Highland end, where the food scene already draws people in from other neighborhoods, and polish the shell around businesses that have already earned their loyalty at the Morningside end, where the win is keeping a 30-year noodle shop looking as good as the neighborhood feels about it.
Neither approach is dramatic on its own. Together, they explain something residents on both ends have probably sensed without being able to name. If you have wondered why a butcher shop's neighbor turned into a wine bar with a national write-up, or why contractors keep showing up outside a restaurant that has been open since the Clinton administration, the answer in both cases traces back to the same firm making a bet on the same street, just at different points along it.
For anyone who already calls Morningside or Virginia-Highland home, none of this requires action. Doc Chey's is not going anywhere. Kinship's butcher counter is not going anywhere. What is worth knowing is that the version of North Highland Avenue you have lived with for years is being actively shaped right now, on both ends, by the same hand, and the easiest way to understand either project is to look at what's happening at the other end of the same road.
If you're weighing what any of this shift in your neighborhood's commercial core might mean down the road, for a sale, a purchase, or simply understanding how your street is changing, Erin Yabroudy & Associates knows this corridor block by block. Request a private market consultation whenever the time feels right.