The dining room at 810 N. Mangum St. has held two restaurants this year. Through early summer it was Little Bull, Chef Oscar Diaz's Michelin-recommended modern Mexican restaurant. By mid-October the same room had reopened as Melao Colombian Bistro.
That room shows what happened downtown this fall. Almost every notable opening since August moved into a space someone else had already built, and several of the people involved were simply moving to a different room. Downtown's map is being redrawn by reshuffling the buildings it already has.
One room on Mangum Street, two restaurants in one season
Little Bull opened on Mangum Street in 2023. After three years there, the Mezcalito Group moved it to a larger renovated space a few blocks away. Hey Durham reported in June that the restaurant had earned a Michelin recommendation and a place on The News & Observer's Top 50 Restaurants in the Triangle earlier this year. Little Bull reopened at its new address in August.
The Mangum Street room didn't sit empty for long. By late August, Hey Durham reported that three childhood friends, Sebastian Salinas, Miguel Cantor and Diego Baron, were renovating the former Little Bull dining room and kitchen for Melao. The name comes from a sweet syrup made from sugar cane. Salinas told the outlet the goal was affordable dinners and cocktails "for the whole Durham community." One wall of the renovated room is lined with glass jars meant to hold Colombian candies.
Melao opened Oct. 15, and WRAL confirmed the next day that it was open in the former Little Bull space. WRAL's description includes lulo and maracuyá, coastal seafood and bandeja paisa. Its listed hours are 5 to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 5 p.m. to midnight Friday through Sunday.
The 1910s hardware store at 301 E. Chapel Hill St.
Little Bull's new home is a much older room. The building at 301 E. Chapel Hill St. sits inside downtown Durham's National Register historic district and dates to the 1910s. Over the decades it housed the W.C. Lyon Company hardware and paint business and, later, SpeeDeeQue Printing.
This handoff also took years. The Mezcalito Group started renovating the property in 2024 with a steakhouse in mind, then changed plans. During the year-long renovation, the team saved wood from the original interior walls and reused salvaged beams in the staircase that leads up to a second-floor bar. Favian Miranda, the group's hospitality director, told Hey Durham they worked to keep "the look people know and love from the original Little Bull, right down to the chandeliers and the frames on the walls."
So a restaurant carried its own furnishings into an old hardware store, and that move left a finished kitchen on Mangum Street for a first-time team.
Five weeks under Bar Virgile
The quickest swap of the season happened underground near DPAC. Annexe, the windowless cocktail bar Daniel Sartain built beneath Bar Virgile, closed in July after six years. It had opened in 2020, survived its first months on curbside sangria and take-home meals, and later found a crowd with DJs and lively weekends. Hey Durham noted that Sartain planned to keep the space and debut something new there.
The something new is Saint Mars, a vinyl listening bar at 105 S. Mangum St. that opened Aug. 24. According to The News & Observer, the change took about five weeks. Co-owner and design lead Nellie Vail swapped Annexe's pink and green neon for sapele wood, black walnut, carpet and library-style lighting, and the team added sound panels to the walls and ceiling. Sartain told the paper:
"If someone stops in for 90 minutes, they'll hear two records in their entirety, there will be conversation pieces, some deep tracks, some dead air."
Sartain's collection of about 1,000 records supplies the music. The cocktails lean toward stiff sippers like a Black Manhattan, and Bar Virgile upstairs handles the snacks. The name comes from Sartain's daughter, who called her play kitchen Saint Mars seven years ago. In this case the operator stayed and only the concept changed. Sartain also owns High Dive, which gives him a small block of nightlife a few yards from DPAC.
The power plant at American Tobacco Campus gets a second job
The biggest reopening downtown went into a building first put up to run a factory. Fullsteam opened its American Tobacco Campus taproom on Sept. 29 and started kitchen service on Sept. 30. It sits in the campus's old power plant, between the water tower and the smokestack. Hey Durham reported that the move took two years of planning and construction. The new space has no on-site brewing, unlike the original Rigsbee Avenue location. Fullsteam now contract brews its beer in Rocky Mount and at the NoDa brewery in Charlotte.
Chef and baker Phoebe Lawless leads food, beverage and hospitality. The building also holds Lucky's Lounge, with low ceilings and neon lightning bolts.
Inside the building is a handoff within a handoff. Fullsteam took over the 100-seat theater that began as the Full Frame theater under Duke's Center for Documentary Studies. Fullsteam's own account says the theater "has seen limited use" since the Center consolidated its offices in the COVID era. The plan is an even mix of private events and Fullsteam programming. The documentary festival itself is still running, with the 2026 festival's listed screening venues at the Durham Convention Center and the Carolina Theatre.
Across campus, East of Texas opened in the Reed Building by the Lucky Strike water tower. It's the second North Carolina location for founder Claire Calvin's Winston-Salem concept, which pairs Central Texas-style smoked meats with Tex-Mex. CBC Real Estate, the campus landlord, announced the opening late this summer and scheduled a grand-opening weekend over Labor Day.
Who moved where
| Address | What was there | What's there now | Opened |
|---|---|---|---|
| 810 N. Mangum St. | Little Bull | Melao Colombian Bistro | Oct. 15 |
| 301 E. Chapel Hill St. | W.C. Lyon Company, later SpeeDeeQue Printing | Little Bull | August |
| 105 S. Mangum St. | Annexe | Saint Mars | Aug. 24 |
| ATC power plant | Full Frame theater and campus power plant | Fullsteam | Sept. 29 |
| ATC Reed Building | Tobacco-era campus building | East of Texas | Late summer |
| 125 W. Orange St. | Long-shuttered storefront | Red Phone Booth | Aug. 14 |
Red Phone Booth finishes the list. Owners Ralph Mensah and Michael Thomas opened the Prohibition-style lounge on Aug. 14 in a downtown storefront that had been shut for a long time. Guests enter through a restored London phone booth by dialing a code. Plans announced earlier this year called for more than 400 premium spirits, and the menu adds Neapolitan pizzas and Italian-inspired small plates. Hey Durham noted that the opening slipped from an original June target.
The rooms still waiting
Some rooms are still waiting for their next tenant. It's a Southern Thing closed its downtown flagship on Main Street this summer after nearly a decade. The News & Observer reported that owner Pete Susca cited rising rent and air-conditioning problems, and that the Ellis Crossing location remains open. That room was also a handoff. Susca had been bar manager at Motto, the fine-dining restaurant that held the space before him, and when Motto closed in summer 2017 he turned the room into It's a Southern Thing by that September.
On Geer Street, the former Pit Authentic Barbecue space is still empty. A barbecue restaurant announced in September that it had leased the space, aiming for a late December or early January opening, then dropped its plans on Oct. 7. No new tenant has been announced.
Downtown Durham Inc. described the closures this way. When Annexe and three other downtown businesses announced plans to close in July, DDI CEO Nicole Thompson told Hey Durham that downtown is in transition rather than decline. She pointed to inflation, tariffs, market uncertainty and higher gas prices as pressures on owners and customers, and counted 10 new businesses expected in the coming months. "It's not that everything is closing and we don't have anything in the pipeline," she said. Since then, Saint Mars has taken the Annexe room, Melao has taken Little Bull's, and Red Phone Booth has filled a storefront that sat dark for years.
Next on the list
The pattern reaches past downtown, and several more openings are coming.
- Haven Hot Chicken plans to open at 706 Ninth St., next door to Starbucks, by the end of the year. The News & Observer reported that franchisees John Enterline and Tim Loebach have a 10-location North Carolina deal that starts with Durham.
- High Horse is expected this fall at the Horseshoe at Hub RTP, according to WRAL; no firm date has been announced.
- LongHorn Steakhouse opened at 6917 Fayetteville Road in the former Chili's building across from The Streets at Southpoint, WRAL reported.
- Restaurant Cornelia, from Alex Catotti and Erin Kobler, is expected around spring 2027, along with a cafe and wine bar called The Vintner and The Baker. WRAL reported in August that no location had been confirmed.
The easiest of the new rooms to try this season is the old power plant. Fullsteam's ATC event calendar lists Trivia with Arturo! from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. every Thursday from Oct. 22 into December, and Astronomy on Tap on Tuesday, Nov. 3 and Tuesday, Dec. 1.
The Spotlight Realty team keeps track of how downtown Durham's buildings change hands, from storefronts like these to the homes nearby. If you'd like to talk about what's changing around a part of Durham you care about, contact us.
