For years, the honest answer to "where's the good stuff on Bull Street?" was north of Forsyth. Broughton had the retail, the Landmark District had the restaurants, and the Starland end of the corridor was a promising but patchy stretch that asked residents to plan their evening around one destination at a time. That is no longer the map.
Summer 2026 is the season the balance flipped. The four blocks between Anderson Street and Victory Drive now hold enough anchors that a Midtown resident can park once, or walk from home, and stay put for the evening. The clearest evidence sits at 2400 Bull.
The 2400 Bull Street building is doing the work of a small district
In late June, Savannah Agenda reported that Leopold's Ice Cream had filed a petition with the Historic Preservation Commission to install a neon-illuminated wall sign at 2400 Bull St., taking the space left by the recent closing of the Lite Foot Company. If approved, it will be the fourth Leopold's location, joining the East Broughton flagship, the airport, and Whitemarsh Island.
Read the tenant list of the building Leopold's is joining and the significance sharpens. The 2400 Bull St. redevelopment, completed between 2020 and 2022 on the former Sav-A-Lot and David's supermarket footprint, now houses Brochu's Family Tradition, Garden Square, Sola Salon, and F45 Training under one roof. That is a restaurant with a cult local following, a wine-and-small-plates spot chef Kevin Garcia opened as a pre-dinner counterweight, a salon suite operator, and a gym. Add an ice cream shop to that mix and the building starts to function the way Habersham Village functions a mile east: as an anchor with enough gravity to organize a walk.
The five-minute-walk map has changed
Starting at 2400 Bull and moving in either direction, here is what a resident can actually reach on foot before their shoes get uncomfortable:
- Foxy Loxy Cafe for coffee with the Tex-Mex breakfast menu that has kept it on shortlists for a decade
- Big Bon Bodega for morning bagels and the four residential lofts stacked above it at the corner where Habersham meets 37th
- Starland Yard for outdoor pizza from Vittoria Pizzeria, a rotating food truck lineup, and the Water Witch Tiki bar
- The Wyld Dock Bar for marsh-side seating a short drive off Bull
- Green Truck Pub for the burger locals default to
- Flora & Fauna, the newest café addition to Bull Street per its soft-launch coverage this spring, for biscuits and oat milk lattes
- E. Shaver Starland, the second location of the downtown bookstore, which hosted author Peter Relic on July 10 for a reading and Q&A
- Starlandia Art Supply and Picker Joe's Antique Mall for the errand-into-browsing pivot
- Savannah African Art Museum at 201 E. 37th, free and quiet, with an active lecture series
That is a genuine neighborhood inventory, not a top-ten list scraped from a visitor guide. It is also the reason many Bull Street residents have stopped saying "let's go downtown" when they mean dinner.
Habersham Village is the counterweight a mile east
The other pole of Midtown daily life sits at 4511 Habersham, between 60th and 63rd, which LoopNet describes as Midtown's most established shopping center. The Gaslight Group's The 5 Spot anchors it with weekend brunch from 8 a.m. and happy hour every day from 3 to 6. Bella's Italian Cafe, Hirano's, TailsSpin Pet Supplies, and Bentley's Pet Stuff fill out the rest of the plaza. The stretch sits inside the medical corridor around Memorial and St. Joseph's/Candler, which is why the parking lot fills at lunch on weekdays and clears out for the neighborhood by six.
The relationship between the two poles is the story. Bull Street draws the evening crowd. Habersham Village handles the weekday errands and the low-key dinners. Ardsley Park, Parkside, and Thomas Square sit between them, which means a resident of any of those streets has two distinct commercial spines within a five-minute drive and can pick based on what the night calls for.
Dates worth putting on the calendar between now and Labor Day
The corridor's summer calendar has a rhythm most drive-by visitors miss. Locals who have watched Starland's month-to-month evolution know the events that carry the neighborhood.
Friday, August 7 and Friday, September 4 — Starland First Fridays. The monthly walking event that keeps galleries, studios, and shops open late. The July 3 edition, described in the Savannah Made Simple weekly guide, drew the Fourth of July weekend crowd. August and September tend to run cooler and less packed.
July 30 through August 1 — Savannah Bananas at Grayson Stadium. Per the official Banana Ball 2026 schedule, this is the next Savannah home stand after a mostly on-the-road summer for the touring club.
September 11 through 13 and September 18 through 20 — Two more Bananas home stands to close out the ballpark's regular season, both at Grayson Stadium inside Daffin Park.
Through August 1 — Grease at the Historic Savannah Theatre, running since June 12. Not a Starland event, but a walkable one from the north end of the corridor.
The Bananas dates matter because Grayson Stadium sits inside Daffin Park, which is the same park where Midtown families run the loop, walk the dog, and stack their weekend errands. Game nights transform the surrounding blocks into a slow-moving crowd that spills into Bull Street after the last inning. If you live in the 40th-through-Victory corridor, plan around it. If you like the energy, plan for it.
What Grayson Stadium adds to a Midtown week
The ballpark opened in 1926, which makes this its centennial season. It seats roughly 5,000, and the layout pulls fans close to the field in a way the newer minor-league parks do not replicate. The Bananas will visit 75 stadiums and 45 states in 2026 per the tour announcement, but Grayson is still the home base, and the Indianapolis Clowns' return there this spring drew more than 5,000 fans per Baseball America's coverage.
The area's popularity with locals, many of whom tend to avoid the more tourist-oriented downtown these days, has been growing, as have options for shopping, dining, art and entertainment.
That line from Savannah Agenda's Leopold's reporting captures the shift more cleanly than most local commentary has. The corridor is not competing with River Street for tourist dollars. It is absorbing the residents who used to drive north for a night out and now walk south instead.
The residential piece has caught up
The commercial changes have arrived alongside a residential build-out. Starland Village, the mixed-use development at 2213 Bull St. from Foram Group, is now leasing 107 units of studio through two-bedroom apartments, per Apartment List's June 23 update, with a rooftop lounge, ground-floor artist studios, and creative office space planned for the second phase. The building sits directly on the walking spine between Forsyth and 40th, which means the pedestrian count on Bull Street between the park and Starland Yard is trending up regardless of what any single restaurant does.
For homeowners already established in Ardsley Park, Parkside, Thomas Square, or the Streetcar District, the practical effect is straightforward. Foot traffic on the corridor supports the businesses. The businesses hold their leases. The leases keep the anchor tenants stable. And the stability is what makes a Midtown block work for people who live on it, not just people who visit it.
Why this summer reads differently than last
Starland has been "up and coming" in the local press for close to a decade. The pattern until recently was a hot opening, a few quiet years, a closing, another hot opening. What has changed in 2026 is the density. Brochu's, Garden Square, Foxy Loxy, Big Bon Bodega, Green Truck Pub, Vittoria Pizzeria, Water Witch, The Wyld, Flora & Fauna, and now presumably Leopold's are all operating at once, on the same corridor, within a fifteen-minute walk. That has never been true before.
For a Midtown resident, the takeaway is not that the neighborhood has arrived. It is that the calculation of "worth driving downtown for" has quietly inverted. On most Friday nights this summer, the answer is that the block you already live on has more going on than the one you would have driven to.
If you own a home in Ardsley Park, Parkside, Thomas Square, or one of the Midtown streets that feeds Bull, the corridor's momentum shows up in the way your block trades and holds value. When you are ready to talk through what that looks like for your specific street, the McIntosh Realty Team has been working these neighborhoods for more than 20 years. Contact us.
