Restaurant Closures Plague Once-Booming West Midtown

Ford Fry was surprised by how few customers he had in the West Midtown location of Superica, his Tex-Mex concept. The local celebrity chef also owns Little Sparrow and The Optimist in the neighborhood, which are thriving, he said. 

He tried turning Superica into a research and development kitchen, tested new dishes and even launched a burger pop-up, but business never improved.

A year and a half after opening, Fry shuttered the location in August.

“I thought this would open up and do gangbusters. But it opened up and nothing,” Fry said. “Nothing stuck.”

Superica isn’t alone. Since the start of 2024, more than half a dozen West Midtown restaurants have closed their doors. 

Postino WineCafe, West Egg Cafe, Humble Pie and Wagamama shuttered last year, and Culinary Dropout and Snooze An A.M. Eatery called it quits in January. Even in one of the hottest foodie destinations in Metro Atlanta, eateries catering more to the lunch crowd or budget-conscious diners are struggling.

“Rents are too high, the population is too low, and parking is tough,” said Peter Kruskamp, president of The Shumacher Group, one of the city’s more prominent retail brokerages. “There’s been a lot of competition. I think a lot of landlords are signing leases for the sake of signing leases.”

West Midtown, the area west of Georgia Tech from Howell Mill Road’s southern portion to 17th Street, includes neighborhoods like Blandtown, Historic Howell Station and Home Park. Through much of its history, it was an industrial and factory district, but it began to transform with adaptive reuse projects in the 2000s that drew buzzy restaurants and creative and technology businesses.

Developers like Asana Partners, SJC Ventures and Allen Morris brought mixed-use projects like Star Metals District, Brickworks and The Interlock. Nearly 250K SF of retail space has been built in Midtown and West Midtown since 2020, according to Avison Young Market Intelligence Analyst Haley Leek, citing CoStar data. 

Office growth has been even more significant. Between 2019 and the end of 2024, developers added 2.5M SF of office space to West Midtown, according to Lincoln Property Co. 

The added space hasn’t led to a boom in business for local restaurants. 

“The thing to look at is lunch,” said Ben Hautt, the founder of Robles Partners who is redeveloping a couple of warehouses on Collier Road into Upper West Market.

Hautt recently signed Anne Quatrano, the founder of Bacchanalia, to open a lunch spot called Summerland in Upper West Market.

These eateries depend on office workers to fill their seats during the workweek, but half of the Class-A office inventory in West Midtown is still vacant, according to LPC. Just 20K SF of leases were signed in the fourth quarter.

And even leased space is often empty as employees work from home.

Penelope Cheroff, a prominent retail and restaurant broker in Atlanta, said some of the recent closures are from restaurants that were treading water in the early days of the pandemic recovery and are now throwing in the towel.  

“There are operators who held on after the downturn. A lot of those are starting to fall,” said Cheroff, founder of The Cheroff Group. “For the first time since Covid, we’re starting to see some restaurant spaces come back on the market.”

Fine dining restaurants — a handful of which have Michelin stars — have flourished in West Midtown, drawing locals who will tolerate the traffic and parking headaches. But SJC Ventures principal Jeff Garrison said the success of The Optimist, Marcel and Star Provisions has been difficult to replicate.

“I think there’s been such tremendous success in West Midtown restaurants that people felt like some of the fundamentals didn’t apply,” said Garrison, whose company is the developer of The Interlock mixed-use project. “They let the sales numbers dictate the locations rather than the fundamentals of really good locations.”

Fry said Atlanta customers are less likely to visit a casual restaurant if parking isn't convenient, abundant and free. That translates to avoiding West Midtown unless it’s something noteworthy.

“The restaurants that are doing good are the destination restaurants,” Fry said. “And the ones that are struggling are obviously on the casual side.”

Access is crucial for quick-service and fast-casual restaurants, Garrison said. Starbucks has been eyeing locations in West Midtown for years, but it was unable to find one with a drive-thru, which it insisted on for a location. So SJC added a drive-thru in The Interlock's parking deck, and Starbucks' location there has had strong sales, Garrison said. 

“Fast-casual requires a different set of mechanics,” he added.

West Midtown retail rents also squeeze casual eateries. Spaces finished in the past five years command up to $50 per SF, with common area maintenance fees jumping from $5 per SF a few years ago to $11 per SF, Kruskamp said. High rents and inflation of food prices push businesses to raise their prices, to the dismay of their customers. 

“To make sense for the owner today, the rents have to be high,” Kruskamp said. “So it’s kind of a lose-lose situation for everyone involved.”