Ask three people on the Decatur Square what's happening with "the new development downtown" and you may get three different answers, pointing to two different construction sites, on two entirely different clocks.
That mix-up is understandable. Fencing went up on Commerce Drive this month. Cranes have been working East College Avenue since spring. Both sites involve hundreds of new apartments. Both come with the kind of retail chatter that makes a neighborhood pay attention: coffee, a market, maybe even a grocery store that's been missing since 2022. But only one of them will have anything you can walk into before the end of this year. The other is a 2028 story wearing 2026 headlines.
The site everyone means when they say "downtown"
Start with the one most residents are actually picturing: 720 and 750 Commerce Drive, the old Kroger location known around town as Baby Kroger for its unusually small footprint. It closed in late 2022 and has sat behind a chain-link fence ever since, a hole in the middle of a neighborhood that otherwise prides itself on walking to everything.
That changed, in the sense that dirt is finally moving, this September. AMLI Residential has cleared the 2.5-acre parcel and started infrastructure work on a project called AMLI Market Square: 358 apartments, a 642-space parking deck, and roughly 14,500 square feet of ground-floor retail anchored by what the city calls a "qualified grocery store." The Decatur Downtown Development Authority is backing the project with a $13 million tax incentive, but that incentive only pays out once a grocer with at least 200 locations signs a lease. Decaturish reporting has pointed toward Trader Joe's for months, and city officials have all but confirmed it fits the profile without naming names publicly. Until the grocer makes its own announcement, the identity stays under wraps by contract.
Here's the number that matters more than the price tag: preleasing at AMLI Market Square isn't expected to start until late 2028. This is a project that just broke ground. If you've been waiting for the Commerce Drive lot to reopen so you can walk to a grocery store again, you're waiting through two more winters, minimum.
The site that's actually finishing this year
A mile away, on East College Avenue near the Avondale MARTA station, a different project has been quietly getting residents in the door since July. Halo, developed by Charlotte-based Northwood Ravin, is a 370-unit, 7.5-acre transit-oriented project that replaced a stretch of low-rise retail and vacant parcels between New Street and Sam Street. First move-ins started this summer, and developers have told local outlets the project, including its retail and public park, is on pace for full completion by the end of 2026.
That retail is the part worth knowing about even if you never set foot in the building. Halo has signed three tenants so far, filling roughly half its ground-floor retail space:
- Galore Market, a neighborhood market concept from the team behind O4W Market near Krog Street. Notably, this is a different location from the standalone Galore Market planned less than half a mile away on East College Avenue in Avondale Estates, which the ownership group has said is aimed at a different kind of customer, more sit-and-relax patio than mixed-use anchor.
- Condesa Coffee, opening its second location at 1,225 square feet, following its original Old Fourth Ward flagship. Expect the same espresso and pour-over menu that built the brand's following on the west side of town.
- FS8, a Pilates, tone, and yoga studio taking 3,739 square feet, marking the concept's first Georgia location, with additional studios planned for Buckhead and East Cobb.
Add to that a 1-acre public greenspace on Freeman Street and a mural program run with the Decatur Artist Alliance, five large-scale installations planned across the property, and Halo starts to look less like an apartment complex with a coffee shop attached and more like a small commercial node in its own right.
Two projects, two clocks
Laid side by side, the gap in timing is the whole story.
| Halo | AMLI Market Square | |
|---|---|---|
| Location | East College Ave, near Avondale MARTA | 720-750 Commerce Drive, downtown |
| Replaces | Low-rise retail, vacant parcels | Former Baby Kroger (vacant since 2022) |
| Size | 370 units, 7.5 acres | 358 units, 4.3 acres, roughly $144 million |
| Retail signed | Galore Market, Condesa Coffee, FS8 | None yet, grocery lease unconfirmed publicly |
| Grocery component | None announced | ~14,500 sq ft, signals point to Trader Joe's |
| Status as of September 2026 | First move-ins since July, on pace for full completion by year-end | Site cleared, infrastructure work just started |
| Earliest resident activity | Retail opening through late 2026 | Preleasing not expected until late 2028 |
The two projects aren't competing for the same walk. Halo sits closer to the Avondale Estates line, a different daily errand pattern than the Commerce Drive corridor that feeds directly into the Square. If your routine already runs through East College Avenue toward MARTA, Halo's retail lineup changes your fall. If your routine runs through Commerce Drive toward the Square, the lot you've been watching for four years is still, functionally, a construction zone for at least two more.
Why the confusion is worth clearing up
The reason this matters isn't nostalgia for Baby Kroger. It's that Decatur residents make small daily decisions, where to grab coffee before work, whether it's worth driving to Publix on North Decatur Road or Kroger on DeKalb Industrial Way for groceries, based on what they think is coming online. Conflating a Commerce Drive grocery store that's still two years from preleasing with an East Decatur retail plaza that's leasing up right now leads to real errors: postponing a coffee shop visit that's already open, or expecting a walkable grocery option that won't exist until 2028 at the earliest.
The city's own math on the Commerce Drive project underscores the timeline. The economic development agreement between AMLI and the Downtown Development Authority spells out a ten-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes structure precisely because a project of this scale, $144 million, a parking deck, a grocery build-out, a required affordable housing set-aside of 36 units, moves on a development clock, not a retail clock. That's normal for a project this size. It's just not the clock most residents are picturing when they see fencing go up.
Meanwhile, Halo's retail rollout is the more useful signal if you want to know what's actually changing in the neighborhood this fall. About 7,000 square feet of its retail space remains unleased, which means more announcements are likely before the year is out. Oakhurst Realty Partners is handling that leasing, and given the pace so far, that space probably won't sit empty long.
The read for residents
If you live in Decatur and someone tells you "the new development" is bringing back a grocery store any day now, ask which development they mean. If it's Commerce Drive, the honest answer is 2028, and even that depends on a grocery lease that hasn't been publicly confirmed. If it's East College Avenue, the honest answer is: some of it is already open, and the rest is arriving by winter.
Neighborhoods change in fits and starts, and Decatur is currently running two of those starts on parallel but very different timelines. Knowing which is which is the difference between planning your Tuesday coffee run around a real opening and waiting on a project that's still pouring foundations.
If you're curious how these kinds of changes ripple into what a home in Decatur is actually worth right now, whether you're near Commerce Drive, East College Avenue, or somewhere in between, Team Rich Richardson tracks this market block by block. Get your instant home valuation and see where your street stands today.
