Real estate investment firm Newport has announced the first two tenants slated to join South Dwntn‘s Historic Hotel Row — a revitalization project along Mitchell Street intended to re-energize Atlanta’s South Downtown neighborhood.
Fried chicken joint How Crispy will be the first to make a permanent home out of Hotel Row. For the last year, the restaurant has been running a pop-up operation, How Crispy Express, in Summerhill, and plans to open a brick-and-mortar there along with the new space on Hotel Row.
“The opportunity to open in one of the beautiful and historic Hotel Row storefronts was too good to pass up,” the How Crispy team said in a press release. “Nothing brings a district together like good food, and Team Crispy aims to help expand the offerings and experience for the Mitchell Street community while working with other tenants and business owners to define the bright economic future of South Downtown.”
If fried chicken isn’t your thing — first of all, are you crazy? — Hotel Row has something a bit cheesier in store for you. Slater Hospitality (the people behind 9 Mile Station, Skyline Park, and the much-anticipated Rooftop LOA) will open a counter service pizza place on the historic street, complete with a walk-up window perfect for grabbing a slice on the go.
“We are honoring my family’s Italian heritage and making pizza the way my grandmother made it,” Mandy Slater of Slater Hospitality said in a press release. “Pizza has long been a family tradition of mine and was eaten on all special occasions. It was simple, made with fine ingredients, but had unlimited creative options to top it with whatever we felt like at the moment.”
Like Slater’s grandmother’s pizza, the Hotel Row pizza joint will specialize in square slices with a variety of toppings. And to make things even more interesting, Slater Hospitality is also planning on opening an underground cocktail bar in the space, to be built around an existing Outkast mural as an homage to Atlanta’s music scene.
Construction at Hotel Row is expected to be finished in late 2021, and tenants should be moving in as early as Spring 2022. More restaurants, specialty retail stores, creative offices, local businesses, and unique artist spaces are expected to join the list of tenants. And if Hotel Row’s first two tenants are at all a sign of what’s to come, to say we’re excited is an understatement.
