What this food hall could mean for a south Atlanta neighborhood

Terminal South opened earlier this year in the Peoplestown neighborhood, about one mile from the Atlanta Beltline’s forthcoming Southside Trail. It’s a neighborhood on the cusp of what could be major change. Segment 2 of the Atlanta Beltline’s Southside Trail crosses through it and is set to be completed this summer, and it’s a stop on MARTA’s first rapid transit line that debuted April 18.

Amid it all, Terminal South has opened its doors at the edge of Peoplestown, poised to be at the center of a more connected neighborhood.

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

A long road to opening

When Ahrendt learned that the couple who owned the warehouses on Ridge Avenue was looking for something to do with the buildings, the Grant Park resident drove over to check them out.

Although the building wasn’t particularly impressive at first, stacked floor to ceiling with random storage, she said she saw an opportunity for a project that would bring more amenities to southeast Atlanta.

“What I saw was, our segment of the Beltline, we don’t have a food hall, we don’t have enough retail, we don’t have enough services to really serve our side of town,” she said in an interview at Switchman Hall.

Before Terminal South, Stafford hadn’t worked on an intown Atlanta project in years, Ahrendt said, and never before had it built a food hall. Most of the company’s properties in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina are grocery store-anchored shopping centers.

When the Switchman Hall project was announced in 2023, food halls were booming. In the last several years, city centers around metro Atlanta have opened their own versions, inspired by the success of places like Krog Street Market and Ponce City Market.

Nearly three years after Switchman Hall was announced, the food hall quietly opened in December with the debut of Staxx, a restaurant offering acai bowls, smoothies and sandwiches.

A representative from Terminal South confirmed the food hall has 13 out of 18 stalls filled, plus a vendor for the bar, with five still left to be leased. Of those 13 stalls that are leased, Alvarez said she’s seen nine stalls open regularly, including her restaurant, Staxx.

Credit: Courtesy of Staxx

Credit: Courtesy of Staxx

The food hall was an opportunity Andy Bibliowicz, founder of Peoples Town Coffee, also recognized. In fact, he saw opportunity in the neighborhood more than 10 years ago, when he first bought a home in Peoplestown.

When Bibliowicz heard about Stafford’s plans for Switchman Hall, he and his business partner, Luis Perez, knew this was a project they wanted to participate in, so they developed Te Quiero Tacos, a taco and margarita concept.

He and Perez signed the lease for Te Quiero in July 2023, and in 2024 Bibliowicz signed on to add a second restaurant, Feel Goods Pizza and Feel Goods Pizza Gluten Free, with plans to open in an adjacent building in the Terminal South development.

But come January, Bibliowicz said in an interview he was feeling concerned about the food hall since it wasn’t fully leased and many of the tenants weren’t opening at the same time, including Te Quiero Tacos, which was still under construction.

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Build-out for the tenants took some time, which Ahrendt attributed to delays with permitting and construction the vendors experienced as they all worked with their own contractors and companies.

Bibliowicz’s two restaurant concepts were set to open in Switchman Hall this year, but in March, Ahrendt and Bibliowicz confirmed Te Quiero Tacos and Feel Goods Pizza will no longer open in Terminal South.

Ahrendt said Switchman Hall had been fully leased twice over the past three years, which led them to expand the food hall, but in early 2025, multiple leases terminated before those businesses began construction, placing Switchman Hall back in the re-leasing process several times.

She attributed many of these tenant fluctuations to a challenging food and beverage environment from rising labor and food costs, as well as difficulty competing with preexisting second-generation spaces, which are cheaper for restaurants to move into since most of the equipment is already installed.

Since December, more stalls in Switchman Hall have been opening for business, including Jamaican eatery Perfect Seasoning and Indian restaurant Masala Times, a concept from the team behind Desi Tadka.

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Dalisha Williams, a co-owner of Perfect Seasoning, was interested in opening at Switchman Hall because she wanted to draw on a new demographic of customers. She also hoped the development would be popular considering the lack of other places to eat nearby.

But after waiting three years for the food hall to open, and since it isn’t fully occupied, she told the AJC that she was concerned some of the buzz had died.

“There’s still a lot of empty spaces in there, so that’s causing the food hall not to be as active as it could be,” she said.

Perfect Seasoning had a location in the Chattahoochee Food Works that has since closed, and she recently opened one in Midtown’s micro-food hall, the Peacherie. Compared with her experience at Chattahoochee Food Works, she said she hasn’t seen as much marketing around Switchman Hall to the wider community and, as a result, is seeing lower turnout than she expected.

“Some of the food operators are getting discouraged because no one is walking through there so they don’t have the funds to just pay employees to just have bodies there,” she said.

Alvarez said foot traffic has been picking up for her since opening, and that her weekends have been busier. Many of the customers who find her come through social media, she said, but once there’s more signage posted around that it’s a food hall, she thinks it will become busier.

“Terminal South and the food hall overall is needed,” Alvarez said. “If marketed correctly and everybody stays consistent with everything, then I can see this being a nice asset for the community.”

Will a rising tide raise all ships?

Besides developing Terminal South, Ahrendt had another task to accomplish: connecting with the Peoplestown neighborhood.

At first, not everyone in the area was ecstatic about the food hall. The Peoplestown Revitalization Corp., a community of longtime Peoplestown residents incorporated in 1991, wanted more jobs that would pay a livable wage in the area, said Columbus Ward, the president of the committee and a longtime neighborhood activist.

A food hall didn’t sound like it would bring many jobs, he said in a phone call with the AJC.

Ahrendt said she attended community meetings and assured them that wasn’t the case. When the group told her they hoped for industrial jobs to return to the community, she explained that was no longer realistic.

A food hall would still bring jobs, she said, and Stafford would be committed to working with the community by requiring each tenant to contribute a portion of their sales to a needs-based scholarship for students in the immediate community that Stafford would then match.

Dream Builders, a local nonprofit that aims to bring programming back into Peoplestown and support neighborhood kids in finding jobs and building a future, will be administering the scholarships to students, Ahrendt said.

Stafford also has plans to hire “ambassadors,” essentially security guards, to patrol the inside of Terminal South while the outside of the property is patrolled by robotic security dogs.

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Stafford is working with Dream Builders to staff the ambassadors and the janitorial crew. Ahrendt said they’ve hired about five people with plans to add more as foot traffic at Terminal South picks up.

When Ahrendt began working with Darrell Jay Johnson, the founder of Dream Builders, he said he was hopeful about Terminal South and its partnership with the community. He grew up in a house at the end of the block, “so I knew what this space had been, but I also knew what this space could be,” he said.

The minute he heard about the project, Johnson immediately thought about possible jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities, even down to how the restaurants might be able to use produce from the community garden he runs.

“It wasn’t fully what the neighborhood wanted,” Ward said. “But I think the neighborhood accepted the idea because she was trying to offer us what would be considered community benefits for the neighborhood.”

Now that it’s open, Ward said his neighborhood group hasn’t received many updates, and while there has been news on social media, it’s a platform some of the older, legacy residents aren’t on.

Ward thinks if more residents knew about Terminal South, neighbors would want to help support the businesses when they can afford to. He’s tried to bring more awareness to it himself by scheduling meetings at the food hall, eating there about once a week, and he’s even planning a field trip for some seniors in the area.

Developments in other Atlanta neighborhoods have pursued similar paths, like Lee + White in the West End. MDH Partners and Ackerman & Co. acquired the space for the expansive mixed-use development in 2019, and the food hall started opening in phases in 2023.

“We took particular care to meet with different neighborhood groups and listen to them as to what they wanted and not tell them ‘This is what we’re going to do,’” said Leo Wiener, president of retail at Ackerman & Co.

When they were building out Lee + White, Wiener said the neighbors overwhelmingly requested healthy options, which is what led them to include wrap and bowl restaurant Gusto in the mix. Ackerman & Co. also had a goal of using as many local operators as possible with some first-time operators and some multiunit vendors to balance the risks for themselves.

“It’s still a huge risk,” he said. “Food halls tend to turn over 10-20% of their stalls every couple years.”

Last year, Lee + White saw about 1 million visitors to the property, he said, which includes the retail sites, offices and other restaurant and brewery concepts at the development.

He attributes the success of Lee + White so far to listening to the community and bringing in a variety of food offerings that they wanted. Also, having a central bar has helped them attract crowds on weekends and evenings, and being located off the Beltline brings in plenty of foot traffic.

Ward and his neighbors are deeply invested in the success of Peoplestown. While he said residents appreciate food options located in walking distance from their homes, above all he’s focused on wealth creation in the neighborhood — how to turn incoming development into employment opportunities that pay livable wages.

“We also got a lot of engaged people in the community who do care and love this community like I do,” Ward said. “And they want to see something better and they want to work for something better.”

As for the jobs promised to the Peoplestown residents, Johnson said he knows that may take some time as the food hall builds out its tenant mix and gets busier.

When the Beltline moves into an area, it can mean profound economic and social changes. Johnson said other developers have approached him to discuss opportunities in the area, but Ahrendt is the only one who has delivered on her promises and been a “good steward” in the community.

While he’s hopeful about the future of the neighborhood he loves, he said he wants to make sure the legacy residents aren’t forgotten.

“We are all Peoplestown. There’s no ‘this side of the street’ or ‘that side of the street.’ This neighborhood is unique,” Johnson said. “Hopefully the development don’t pass us over, and we actually rise with it.”