The most talked-about lot on Marietta Square is still a lot. The vacant parcel at 77 North Park Square, known locally as the Goldstein Gap, was supposed to become a Ted's Montana Grill after the Historic Board of Review approved plans in 2025. Then the operator pulled the project on January 8, 2026. If you left the Square alone for a year and came back looking for what changed, the empty corner is what you would notice first, and it would tell you exactly the wrong story.
Because the rest of the block did not wait. Between January and April, four rooms changed hands, one Michelin-starred kitchen quietly turned the lights back on, and a wine market opened where none existed. The Square did not lose an anchor in 2026. It stopped needing one.
What the empty lot obscures
The Ted's cancellation drew local attention because the Goldstein Gap has been sitting since 2010, when the Cuthbertson building came down and the corner became a fenced blank on an otherwise continuous streetwall. Public art on the fence has been doing the work a building would normally do. When a national chain with Georgia roots walked away, it read like a setback.
Read the rest of the block, though, and 2026 looks like the opposite. The operators who filled the actual vacancies were local, and they mostly replaced restaurants with concepts that ask the Square to be used more often, not less.
The swaps, mapped
| Address | What was there | What's there now | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 45 W. Park Square | Piastra (2015–2025) | Asher & Rose Modern Grocers | Jan. 28, 2026 |
| 29 West Park Square | Red Hare Brewing & Distilling | West Park Sports Club | Apr. 20, 2026 |
| Church Street | Deep Roots Wine Market & Tasting Room | New | Mar. 17, 2026 |
| Church Street | Spring (dark for renovations in 2025) | Spring, reopened in limited capacity | Apr. 2026 |
| 34 Powder Springs Street | The Frozen Goose (closed Nov. 2025) | Antika, permitted | Opening 2026 |
Each of those rooms tells a slightly different story about who is betting on the Square.
Piastra to Asher & Rose
The Piastra swap is the one residents feel every week. After a decade on Marietta Square, mother-son owners Chef Greg Lipman and Betty Bahl closed Piastra's final dinner service under its original name on December 31, 2025, and reopened as Asher & Rose Grocers on January 28, 2026. The room is the same. The purpose is not.
The market carries fresh produce, North Georgia cheeses and other dairy products, local pantry goods, custom cuts of meat and fish, and a long list of house-made items including hummus, pimento cheese, soups, pasta sauces, salad dressings, breads, baked goods, prepared meals, side dishes, and ice cream. A café menu built around seasonal ingredients features pizzas, pastas, and rotating specials, alongside wine, beer, cocktails, and coffee.
Which is to say: the block that used to require a dinner reservation now supports a Tuesday errand and a Friday café stop out of the same doorway. Piastra was a room you visited a few times a year. Asher & Rose is one you can put on a weekly loop.
Red Hare to West Park Sports Club
West Park Sports Club opened on April 20, 2026, in the former Red Hare Brewing & Distilling space at 29 West Park Square on Marietta Square, described as an upscale sports bar with plenty of TVs, a darker interior, and leather seating. The early menu includes crispy rice with tuna, crab rangoon flatbread, and bulgogi cheesesteak sliders, and the concept comes from Fork U Concepts, the restaurant group behind Taqueria Tsunami and Stockyard Burgers and Bones.
The Fork U detail is the interesting one. Stockyard Burgers & Bones already sits one block over on Mill Street. That is the same operator taking a second adjacent room on the Square, which is not a hedge. It is a bet that the Square can support two of their concepts within a two-minute walk of each other.
Deep Roots and the quiet return of Spring
Two rooms on Church Street changed the top of the Square's dining pyramid in a single month.
Deep Roots Wine Market + Tasting Room opened by March 2026 on Church Street, with tastings, retail bottles, and event-style programming, signaling a shift toward experience-driven concepts. A dedicated tasting room is a new category for the Square. Wine used to be something you drank alongside dinner here. Now it can be the reason you come out.
The bigger story is easier to miss. Chef Brian So's Michelin-starred Spring, which shut down for renovations, announced in April 2026 that it has reopened in a limited capacity, restoring the top of the Square's dining pyramid without any external announcement campaign. If you had been assuming Spring was gone, that assumption is now out of date.
That happened alongside Spring 2nd Branch on Church Street, Chef So's casual, walk-in-only Korean restaurant. Church Street now holds a Michelin-starred room and its walk-in sibling within a block. Two years ago it held neither.
The rooms still queued
Two more concepts have permits and addresses but not opening dates.
A new food-service concept called Antika is opening soon at 34 Powder Springs Street near Marietta Square, with City of Marietta business records showing Antika registered at the address under BEJ Management LLC and a 100 on an initial food-service inspection dated April 14, 2026. The space was previously home to The Frozen Goose, which opened in late 2022 and closed at the end of November 2025.
Pisano's Pizzeria & Italian Kitchen is coming soon to Marietta Square in the former Ahoy! There Be Dragons gallery space next to Willie Rae's Social House, an extension of the original Downtown Kennesaw location known for New York-style pizza and Italian-American favorites.
One closure worth logging so recommendations stay accurate: Heavenly BBQ announced it would permanently close on Sunday, March 1, 2026, sharing the news in a message thanking customers for their loyalty and support since opening.
The food hall keeps churning
Marietta Square Market on Mill Street is the other engine, and it works on faster turnover than the standalone rooms. New stalls like Roxy's Burgers & More and Fried Rice Master reinforce the role of food halls as steady engines of foot traffic rather than one-time attractions. If you have not walked the hall in six months, you have missed at least two menus.
A week that actually works now
Stack the openings against the late-summer and early-fall calendar and a specific weekly rhythm falls out.
Thursday: A late-lunch bowl at Spring 2nd Branch on Church Street, walk-in only.
Friday, September 4: Marietta Square Art Walk, First Friday, a self-guided walking tour of art galleries, museums and restaurants around Marietta Square, with live music and outdoor art, running March through December. Deep Roots is the natural mid-loop stop.
Saturday morning: Marietta Square Farmers Market, Saturdays 9am to noon, with local and heirloom produce, artisanal goods, plants and prepared foods, followed by a butcher-counter run and a coffee at Asher & Rose.
Saturday, August 8 and September 12: Marietta Summer Night Market at Marietta Square Market from 4:00 PM.
Friday, August 28: Glover Park Concert Series, a free outdoor concert series in Glover Park.
August 6 through 9: Cobb International Film Festival at the Earl and Rachel Smith Strand Theatre.
Labor Day weekend, September 5 through 7: Art in the Park, the big annual Labor Day fine arts festival in downtown Marietta, with 200+ artists from across the country, art demonstrations, and children's activities. Cobb County's only fine art festival, in its 40th year.
The point of the list is not the calendar. It is that a resident within a fifteen-minute drive can now string together the Square four days out of a normal week without repeating a room. That was not true in 2024.
What this means if you live nearby
For people already in Marietta, east Cobb, and the surrounding neighborhoods, the practical effect of 2026 is a shorter drive to more of what people used to drive further for. A butcher counter, a wine tasting room, a walk-in Michelin-starred kitchen, and a Fork U sports bar all sit within a two-block radius. Add the Strand, Glover Park, and the food hall and the Square starts to function less like a destination and more like a main street.
The Goldstein Gap is still there. It may fill in eventually. But the block did not wait for it, and that is the more useful thing to know about Marietta Square right now than any single opening date.
If you are thinking about how the Square's momentum reads against your own home value, or you are watching the neighborhoods around it for a move, The Mike Price Team can walk you through what the last twelve months have looked like on paper. Get Your Free Home Valuation and see where your street sits.
