"Hendershot's is one of my top three favorite places in the city of Athens. It feels like a community living room."
That line came from a regular at Hendershot's, describing why the Prince Avenue coffee shop, bar and music venue mattered to her. It was said in April, in the middle of a story that almost didn't have a happy ending. Five months later, as Athens heads into the fall calendar locals actually track, the fact that Hendershot's is still on that calendar at all says more about how this city holds onto its anchors than any list of grand openings could.
The Day Closing Became Staying Open
In early March, founder Seth Hendershot announced that after more than 15 years, the coffee shop, bar and music venue would close on March 31. He had tried to sell the business before making that call, but as he put it, small business owners everywhere are struggling to keep their doors open. The plan was to go out with what he called a bang: a farewell day of music, art and poetry.
That farewell day turned into something else. During the All Day Fest send-off on March 31, Hendershot introduced the crowd to Dave Martin and Lexi Torres, a couple who had agreed to buy the business rather than let it close. Torres, who spent over a decade in tech on the West Coast before returning to Georgia during the pandemic, already ran a creative community space in Monroe. Martin called Hendershot's his favorite place in Athens. The new owners kept the name, kept the trademark, and said they planned to add matinees, jazz camps and menu translations while keeping the jazz jams that regulars show up for.
The next day, on April 1, Nové Město opened around the corner on Barber Street. The timing wasn't connected, but the contrast is worth sitting with. One Prince Avenue institution nearly vanished and was caught by two people who already loved it. A few blocks away, a brand-new one opened from a team that had been building toward it for roughly five years.
Downtown's Turnover Runs Through People Who Already Live Here
Nové Město came from the same group behind Hi-Lo Lounge: Jon Andrews, Lauren Owens, Katie Gasperec and T Silva. Gasperec, who heads the kitchen, is of Czech descent, and between her family recipes and Andrews' interest in European beers, the lagerhaus landed on a Bohemian, Czech, German and Polish menu at 625 Barber St. The food sold out entirely in the first week.
Downtown, DePalma's transitioned into Pompeii, a casual Italian spot that opened for dinner service on April 3. And on East Broad Street, the building that housed Weaver D's for decades, easily recognized by its lime green paint, got a new coat of white with blue and pink accents. The new owner, Joe Nedza of Baddie's Burger House, opened Hot or Not Chicken Shack there in a nod to the soul food restaurant that came before it.
Three different transitions, three different flavors, but the same pattern underneath: the people taking over these spaces were already working in Athens food and drink before they took the keys. Nobody parachuted in from outside to buy a concept and franchise it downtown.
Beechwood Is Where the Outside Brands Land Instead
That pattern breaks the moment you leave the downtown core. Ted's Montana Grill opened its doors at Beechwood Shopping Center, 196 Alps Road, on August 24, just a week before this was written. It's the chain's 12th Georgia location and 37th overall, and its first in Athens, led by proprietor Terence Holton. Co-founder George McKerrow, who also opened Athens' first LongHorn Steakhouse more than 30 years ago, called bringing "The Big Sky Spirit" to Athens a longtime goal.
The bar will pour Creature Comforts and Terrapin alongside the usual bourbon and wine list, a small local touch inside a national format. But the building itself, the 4,242-square-foot footprint, the mahogany booths, the Western-themed interior, is a planned retail insertion, not a local succession story.
| Where | What changed | Who took over |
|---|---|---|
| Prince Avenue (237 Prince Ave) | Hendershot's ownership | Dave Martin & Lexi Torres, already community fixtures |
| Barber Street (625 Barber St.) | New concept, same team | Hi-Lo Lounge owners expanding |
| East Broad Street (1016 E Broad St.) | Weaver D's building repainted | Joe Nedza, Baddie's Burger House |
| Beechwood (196 Alps Road) | New national chain | Ted's Montana Grill, first Athens location |
If you're trying to guess what's coming to a given corner of Athens, that table is close to a rule. Near downtown and along the older commercial strips, turnover tends to stay in local hands. In planned centers built for national tenants, it doesn't.
The Fall Calendar Nobody Prints on One Page
None of this happens in a vacuum. Fall in Athens is stacked, and the dates worth knowing don't live on a single site:
- September 27 — Insectival at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia at UGA
- October 10 — AthHalf Half Marathon & AthFest Educates 5K, downtown
- October 10 — North Georgia Folk Festival at Sandy Creek Park
- October 30 to 31 — Southern Gothic Festival at the 40 Watt Club
- Wild Rumpus, the Halloween-season street spectacle, closes out the run
Hendershot's own calendar keeps its usual rhythm through the season too, with recurring monthly and weekly bookings running from early September into November. That continuity matters more this year than it would in a typical one. A venue that almost closed in March is still hosting jazz jams in November because two people decided a coffee shop was worth buying rather than letting disappear.
What This Means If You've Lived Here a While
The takeaway isn't that Athens is changing fast. Cities always are. It's that the mechanism behind the change depends entirely on where you're standing. Walk Prince Avenue or Barber Street and you'll find turnover driven by people who already had roots here, buying or building the next thing because they didn't want to lose the last one. Drive out to Beechwood and you'll find turnover driven by chains filling a gap in a shopping center's tenant mix.
Neither pattern is better than the other. But knowing which one applies to a given block tells you something useful about what to expect next time a familiar storefront changes hands. If it's downtown or along one of the older corridors, there's a decent chance the new owner already had a seat at the bar. If it's in a planned center, the odds shift toward something that opened its first Georgia location somewhere else first.
That distinction is the kind of thing you only pick up by paying attention to a place over years, not by reading a single roundup of openings. It's also, incidentally, the same instinct that matters when you're trying to understand why one Athens neighborhood holds its character while another turns over completely. The city rewards people who know the difference.
If you're weighing a move within Athens, Oconee County or Northeast Georgia, or just want a read on how a specific pocket of town is trending, Jennifer Westmoreland has spent three decades tracking exactly this kind of local detail. Reach out to schedule a personalized market consultation whenever the timing is right for you.
