Walk up Freed Street on a Friday in July and the block behaves differently than it did last summer. There is a line at the taco stall inside Gather Cola, Columbia's first food hall which opened on December 5, 2025 at 1014 Freed Street in the Bull Street District. There are strollers heading toward Segra Park an hour before first pitch. Two doors down, a boutique that Charleston shoppers know is hanging signage next to a coffee shop that was, until recently, the only reason most people crossed Bull Street after 5 p.m.
The change is quieter than a ribbon cutting, but if you already live in Elmwood Park, Cottontown, or Earlewood, you have probably felt it. The district finally reads like a place you can spend a whole evening in without moving your car.
The tell isn't the food hall
Gather COLA is the headline. It is also the least interesting piece of the 2026 story, because a food hall opening in a mixed-use redevelopment is exactly what the master plan promised a decade ago. What signals a district actually maturing is churn: tenants leaving, tenants replacing them, and the neighborhood absorbing both without missing a step.
That is what happened this winter. The 181-acre former state hospital campus just north of downtown is entering a new phase of growth marked by change and continuity, the latest example being Three Notch'd Brewing Company's plans to move into the former Iron Hill Brewery space, which closed in September. A brewpub closed. Another brewer took the keys. Nobody had to reinvent the block. That is how urban districts work, and BullStreet is only now old enough to do it.
What's actually inside Gather COLA
If you have not been yet, the shape is worth understanding before you go. The building is a two-story open-air structure with shipping-container aesthetics, ten food stalls on the ground floor, and two bars: Session Tap Room on the first floor next to the entrance, and Remedy, which serves craft cocktails from a bar located in the upstairs area. The upstairs looks out over the amphitheater side of the district.
The vendor mix skews toward Columbia food-truck operators graduating to a permanent counter, which is the useful thing to know:
- Kiki's Chicken and Waffles — a Columbia soul food staple since 2012
- Smoke It Up Express — Stanley Livingston's Carolina barbecue truck, now with a permanent stall
- Los Chicanos Jr. — family-run Tex-Mex, spun off from the Los Chicanos truck
- Bull & Bread and Bahn Sai — both Wilmington, N.C. transplants
- Big Easy Seafood, Bessie's Burgers, Melt Cheesesteaks, Gyromania Grille, Coco Bowlz — rounding out the ten
Every vendor is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. That last hour matters. It is the difference between a lunch spot and a place that holds a ballgame crowd afterward.
The retail slots are small but telling: three retail vendors, including vintage clothing shop Ageless SC, national dessert chain Crumbl Cookies and The Avenue Flower Pop-Up. And SOCO + Gather, part of the larger Gather COLA open-air food hall, is set to open in early 2026, adding a coworking space inside the food hall.
The Iron Hill turnover, and why it reads as good news
Iron Hill closing in September rattled people. It was the district's original sit-down brewery, and its absence over the fall felt like a step backward. What replaced it is more interesting than what left.
Three Notch'd Brewery & Craft Kitchen has opened at 945 Sabal St., taking the same footprint. The Virginia-based brewer already had a Charleston location, so the Columbia opening is a second South Carolina outpost rather than a first attempt. Practically speaking, that means a shorter runway to a full menu and a real beer program. It also means the corner of Sabal and Freed keeps its brewery anchor without the district skipping a summer.
The pattern is the point. A neighborhood that can lose a tenant and replace it in a single quarter is a neighborhood that has a market, not a novelty.
Retail is finally following the coffee
For years the retail side of BullStreet was Methodical Coffee and a rotating cast of pop-ups. That is changing in a specific, low-key way that most residents will only notice when they walk past the West Lawn building.
Popular Southern clothing boutique DressUp announced they're bringing a storefront to the BullStreet district in 2026. The boutique has locations in Greenville and Charleston, but the brand's BullStreet storefront will be the Midlands' first. The new retailer will be located next to Methodical Coffee, in the bottom of the West Lawn building.
Retail chasing coffee is a well-worn urban pattern. Methodical spent the last several years training a foot-traffic habit into the block. DressUp is the first tenant to bet real capital on that habit. Whoever leases the next West Lawn slot will be watching how DressUp does through the fall.
The Fireflies' tenth season is doing more work than usual
Baseball has always been the reason most Columbians set foot on the campus. In 2026 the Fireflies are treating the season like a milestone, and the calendar reflects it. The Fireflies 10th season in the Midlands opens on the road Thursday, April 2 before the team plays their first home series with the Myrtle Beach Pelicans April 7-12 at Segra Park. The season will see the return of the Grits and Los Chicharrones alternate identities and key match-ups with in-state rivals like the Charleston RiverDogs, Myrtle Beach Pelicans and Augusta GreenJackets.
Two dates to circle if you have not already:
- The first time in club history that the Fireflies will host games on both July 3 and July 4. A back-to-back home fireworks weekend is a genuinely new option for the neighborhood.
- A two-week homestand from August 18-30 to close out the I-20 Rivalry with the Augusta GreenJackets and the in-state rivalry against the Charleston RiverDogs. That is the last chance to walk to a game before the season ends.
Segra Park is a working ballpark, but it is also a walking loop. Each week, Monday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm, Segra Park is open to the public. Go here for a unique lunch spot or even to walk the concourse where each lap around equals ⅓ of a mile. Locals with a dog and a lunch break have been quietly using it that way for years.
The evening loop, walked
Here is what changed in practice. In 2024 you came to BullStreet for one thing: a ballgame, a beer, a coffee, a jog around Page Ellington Park. In 2026 you can chain them, on foot, without moving a car.
Park once at the Sabal Street Parking Deck next to Gather COLA, the Freed Street Parking Deck across from Segra Park, or the Bennet at BullStreet Garage. All three options offer two free hours when you use your Passport app. Eat at Gather, cross Freed Street to the ballpark, walk off a barbecue plate on the concourse, and close the night upstairs at Remedy after the last out.
Or skip the game entirely. A 20-acre park opened at BullStreet in 2021 that features walking trails, a dog park, picnic shelters, and several water features, including a 2-acre pond and over 1,600 linear feet of daylighted stream. Page Ellington Park is still the district's most underused amenity. It is a ten-minute walk from any food hall stall, and on summer evenings the pond side stays cooler than the street.
What's still coming, and why it's already changing decisions
Two projects are shaping what the next twelve months will look like on the ground. Publix will open a 50,000+ sq. ft. store at BullStreet, with groundbreaking scheduled for summer of 2026. That is the piece that turns BullStreet from a destination district into a neighborhood people can actually run errands in without leaving.
AMAROK, LLC's plan to invest $69 million in a new 125,000-square-foot headquarters within the BullStreet District is expected to create 296 new jobs and house over 500 employees. Construction for this project is anticipated to begin in 2026. Add the University of South Carolina health sciences campus on 16 acres inside the district, with a new medical school building planned to open in 2027 and a specialty hospital focused on treating brain diseases and the nervous system, and the daytime population on the campus is about to change materially.
More daytime workers means more lunch traffic, which means the food hall's midday hours start mattering as much as its evening ones. It also means the parking math tightens. If you have been treating BullStreet as your quiet weekday coffee spot, enjoy the version that exists now.
The bet the district made in 2015 was that Columbians wanted a downtown neighborhood, not another suburban plaza. Ten years in, the churn, the retail leasing, the tenth-anniversary schedule, and the grocery groundbreaking are all pointing the same direction. It is finally starting to behave like one.
If you already live nearby
For residents of the surrounding blocks, the practical shift is small and useful. The place is worth another look this summer if you gave up on it after Iron Hill closed. The evening hours are real. The retail slots are starting to fill with tenants that have staying power somewhere else in the state. And the ballpark schedule has more built-in reasons to walk over than it has ever had.
If you have been thinking about what your home in Elmwood Park, Cottontown, or the nearby streets is worth in a district that is quietly turning a corner, the Timothy Garland Group is happy to give you an honest read. Start with a free home valuation or browse current Columbia listings whenever you are ready.
