Walk the stretch of North Highland Avenue that everyone in the neighborhood just calls "the Village" and two things are true at once. Doc Chey's Noodle House has had the same name on its awning since 1997, when Rich Chey and Brook Messina opened the doors with a simple pitch: a beer and a bowl for ten dollars. A few storefronts away, at 1397 North Highland, the sign has changed three times in the last decade. Morningside Kitchen. Then Nowak's, which became Nowak's Cantina. Now, as of this summer, a fourth name is on the way.
That contrast, not the fresh paint everyone is talking about, is the real story of what's happening at Morningside Village right now.
The Block That Doesn't Move
Doc Chey's is still serving the original noodle house that launched the pan-Asian mini-chain, and it remains the location longtime regulars point to first. Whiskey Bird, the yakitori-and-cocktails spot from founders Chad Crete and Anthony Vipond, has been on the block since 2017, long enough that its murals from Atlanta artist Christina Kwan feel like part of the building rather than decoration.
Around them sits a small, stable retail mix that rarely makes news precisely because it doesn't need to: The Family Dog, Highland Fine Wine, Highland Runners, and Intown Animal Hospital. None of these businesses are new. None of them are going anywhere. That's the half of Morningside Village that gives the strip its identity.
The One Address That Keeps Changing
Then there's 1397 North Highland. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that single space has cycled through Morningside Kitchen and then Nowak's, which itself pivoted mid-run to Nowak's Cantina, all within roughly the past decade. In June, the paper reported the next occupant: Alere, a new concept from chef Christopher Grossman's team, the same group behind the well-regarded Chastain in Buckhead. Alere is expected to open in 2027, with a seasonal, Southern European-leaning menu and a design partnership between Summerour Architects and Smith Hanes Design.
Grossman's team is not a small operator taking a flyer on a corner space. This is a proven Atlanta restaurant group making a deliberate bet on Morningside well before its doors open in 2027. That's worth sitting with. The address itself has been unstable for ten years. The demand to be there has not wavered at all.
What the Face-Lift Is Actually For
The turnover at 1397 is one reason the rest of the Village is about to look different. In July, the AJC reported that 26th Street Partners, the Atlanta investment firm that owns the roughly 50,000-square-foot property, is putting money into a broad refresh. The plan includes:
- New exterior lighting
- Updated landscaping
- Fresh paint and awnings, including a rendered update for Doc Chey's own storefront
- Artist murals across the property
- Improved wayfinding signage
- New crosswalks designed, in the company's words, to create "distinct crosswalks to clearly define the village as a cohesive district"
That last phrase is the point. A shopping strip that straddles a busy avenue and has quietly lost and gained tenants for years doesn't read as one place from the sidewalk. It reads as a row of separate storefronts that happen to share a parking lot. The renovation is an attempt to make the whole block look like the stable half already feels, even while the churn at addresses like 1397 continues underneath the new paint.
There's a small wrinkle here worth flagging for anyone walking past the scaffolding this fall. By the time the AJC described the beautification project as something still being finalized in early July, 26th Street Partners' own portfolio page had already logged the Morningside Village Beautification Project, architect Gentle Works, with a completion year of June 2026. Whether that's a marketing timeline running ahead of the actual work or a project genuinely wrapped before the press caught up, the gap says something true about how these renovations get talked about. The version tenants and leasing prospects see is often a few steps ahead of the version pedestrians can actually walk through.
The Rituals That Don't Need a Renovation
None of the storefront turnover touches the parts of Morningside Village life that were never about a single tenant to begin with. The Saturday morning farmers market runs on its own calendar regardless of what's happening a block away. The Morningside Wine Walk, a seasonal fundraiser that sends participants sampling wine and small bites through the Village's businesses, has become an annual fixture, with a portion of this year's proceeds benefiting PAWS Atlanta rather than any single restaurant's bottom line. Doc Chey's helps run it, but the event was built to outlast any one tenant on the lease.
That's the other kind of stability at work here, one that doesn't depend on paint, murals, or which name is on the lease at 1397. It's the reason the Village still feels like Morningside's Village even during a decade when one of its storefronts couldn't hold a tenant for more than a few years at a time.
What Changes This Fall, What Doesn't
By the time the new crosswalks and murals are finished, Morningside Village will look more like a single, deliberate place than a row of buildings that happen to share an address. That's a real change, and a welcome one for anyone who walks the block regularly. But the thing that actually made this strip feel permanent was never the paint. It was Doc Chey's staying open since 1997, Whiskey Bird settling in for nine years and counting, and a Saturday farmers market that doesn't care who's leasing the storefront across the street.
Alere will open in 2027 with a proven kitchen behind it and real investment in the space. If it lasts, it'll be because Morningside gave it the same thing it gave Doc Chey's almost thirty years ago: a neighborhood that shows up regardless of what the sign says.
If you're watching Morningside from the other side of a real estate decision, whether that's a first home near the Village or a move that finally puts you within walking distance of Doc Chey's, the Debbie Leonard Group knows this block the way residents do, not just the way a listing sheet describes it. Reach out to schedule your concierge consultation and talk through what a neighborhood like this actually means for your next move.
