Southport Corridor's 2026 Turnover: What's Actually New Between Belmont and Grace
July 9, 2026
July 9, 2026
Southport has changed in a way that is easy to feel but harder to summarize. The major 2026 story is not a rush of full-service restaurants. It is a shift toward places designed for repeated, everyday use: morning coffee, a Tuesday market stop, a workout, quick food, design shopping, and a broader slate of films at the Music Box.
That distinction matters. A new restaurant may pull people to the corridor for one evening. A café with early hours, a fitness studio with recurring classes, or an expanded cultural venue can generate activity across many more parts of the day.
As of July 15, the verified Southport Corridor new openings 2026 include Colectivo Coffee, Reformation, STRONG Pilates, and the Music Box Theatre’s third screen. The Bakehouse is operating, though its exact opening date could not be verified. Ernesta and Rush Bowls are announced but not yet open, while the former bank at Addison is moving toward residential redevelopment.
The short version: Southport is becoming more of an all-day neighborhood circuit. The most meaningful changes reward frequent visits rather than occasional destination trips.
The clearest place to begin is 3258 N. Southport Ave., where Colectivo Coffee opened on July 8 in the former Schoolyard Tavern space.
The corner now has a different cadence. Colectivo opens daily at 6:30 a.m., bringing activity to the southern stretch of the corridor well before most shops unlock their doors. The approximately 2,100-square-foot café includes 40 indoor seats, 26 patio seats, and a walk-up pickup window. Those details suggest a space built for several kinds of visits, from a quick coffee to a longer morning at a table.
The delay also explains why the opening felt overdue. The project was announced in 2024, but engineers later determined that the building’s south wall had to be completely reconstructed. What appeared from the sidewalk to be a slow café build-out became a substantial structural project requiring new permits and engineering review.
Colectivo’s arrival does more than fill a long-vacant corner. Its early hours and patio create a new morning anchor at the Belmont end of the walk. That is the first piece of Southport’s larger rebalancing toward daily routines.
A few blocks north, the Southport station continues to organize how the street moves. The seasonal Low-Line Market is active beneath the tracks at 3410 N. Southport Ave., running Tuesdays from 3 to 7 p.m. through September 29.
The market itself is not a 2026 opening, but its current schedule gives the newer storefronts useful context. Someone can leave the Brown Line, shop from farmers, food vendors, and artisans beneath the tracks, then continue north toward the retail blocks. It turns an ordinary commute into a compact neighborhood routine.
Just beyond the station, Reformation provides one of the year’s confirmed retail changes. The fashion brand opened at 3452 N. Southport Ave. on May 19, replacing Dr. Martens.
The store focuses on occasion pieces and classic styles, supported by Reformation’s technology-assisted Retail X fitting rooms. Shoppers can request items and sizes through in-store screens rather than carrying multiple options around the sales floor. The brand’s current store directory confirms that the Southport location is operating.
This is a direct replacement rather than a new building or expanded storefront. Still, the change is revealing. Footwear gave way to a fashion concept designed around service, fittings, and a more curated in-store experience.
The addresses around 3530 and 3539 N. Southport show why every “now open” list needs a status check.
ThirdLove’s boutique at 3539 has closed. The company’s official directory now labels its Chicago store permanently closed, confirming that the change moved beyond an early leasing report.
Across the street, HYOU Fine Jewelry was announced in February as a temporary, Leap-operated pop-up at 3530. HYOU’s store directory still lists Southport Chicago, but the concept should not be treated as a confirmed permanent tenant.
The next announced name for 3530 is Ernesta, a custom-sized rug company planning its first Chicago showroom. The approximately 1,475-square-foot space sits next to Anthropologie. No opening date had been announced as of July 15.
The exact tenant sequence at this address is not fully clear from available reports, so a definitive “this replaced that” history would overstate what is known. The broader mechanism is clearer: the storefront is being used for flexible occupancy, allowing digitally oriented brands to test a physical location before the space turns again.
That model changes how residents should read the avenue. A sign in the window may represent a permanent shop, a short-term pop-up, or a showroom still months from opening. At 3530, the rotation itself is the story.
At 3604 N. Southport Ave., the former drive-through bank property is not becoming another boutique. A permit issued on March 30 calls for a four-story, 10-unit residential building on the northwest corner of Addison and Southport.
The planned building, designed by Jonathan Splitt Architects, replaces a bank and a sizable surface-parking area. Plans include a detached four-car garage and one surface space. No construction completion date has been published, and the future homes have not been identified as either rentals or condominiums.
This project belongs in the corridor update because its influence will differ from a tenant swap. Reformation can change a single storefront immediately. Redeveloping the bank site changes the physical form of a prominent corner and adds residences directly on the avenue.
The status is equally important: this is a permitted project, not a completed opening. Residents should expect a longer timeline than the papered windows of a typical retail build-out.
The northern blocks contain the densest concentration of food, fitness, and cultural changes.
The Bakehouse Chicago is open daily from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 3706 N. Southport Ave. Its menu combines coffee and familiar pastries with cachitos, tequeños, guava cookies, alfajores, and guava-and-cream-cheese turnovers.
The Southport location was operating by spring 2026, but a reliable grand-opening date was not available. It is best described simply as open rather than assigned an unsupported debut date.
Like Colectivo, The Bakehouse strengthens the corridor’s morning and daytime offer. The two businesses are separated by several blocks and serve different menus, but both support frequent visits rather than a single evening occasion.
At 3722 N. Southport Ave., Rush Bowls is preparing a menu of açaí and fruit bowls, smoothies, protein-oriented options, and customizable toppings.
No verified opening date has been announced. For now, Rush Bowls belongs on the watch list rather than the open-now list.
Its planned location still contributes to the emerging pattern near Grace. Quick food is settling beside recurring fitness, creating a compact cluster oriented around daytime use.
STRONG Pilates opened June 6 at 3730 N. Southport Ave. The Australian-founded studio combines Pilates-inspired resistance training with strength and cardio intervals on proprietary Rowformer and Bike equipment.
The studio occupies part of the former Chase Bank property at 3728–3730. This is another example of a banking space being recast for a more active use, though it is a tenant conversion rather than the full redevelopment planned at Addison.
STRONG also sharpens the wellness theme running through the 2026 turnover. This is not a passing reference to “lifestyle retail.” It is a scheduled, membership-based use that can bring the same customers back to the block several times a week.
The most significant cultural addition sits directly across the street.
On June 26, the Music Box Theatre opened its third screening room at 3733 N. Southport Ave. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the completed auditorium has 98 seats and occupies two converted commercial storefronts immediately south of the original entrance.
The scale becomes clearer beside the theater’s existing rooms. The main auditorium seats approximately 700, while the refreshed second theater has 62 seats. The new room sits between them in capacity and gives the Music Box more flexibility for local premieres, filmmaker events, community partnerships, and specialized programming.
The conversion cost approximately $2.5 million, including $1.2 million from a 2025 City of Chicago community development grant. Unlike a standard tenant opening, this expansion adds capacity to an institution that already draws people to the northern end of Southport throughout the week.
That makes the third screen one of the most consequential changes on the corridor. Coffee and fitness extend the day. The Music Box gives residents more reasons to remain on the block into the evening.
At Grace Street, the storefront audit meets a broader neighborhood connection. The new Grace Street Neighborhood Greenway was almost complete by June 5 and crosses Southport at the corridor’s northern edge.
The roughly three-mile route connects the Chicago River and Lake Michigan through a series of lower-stress cycling treatments and contraflow segments. Streetsblog Chicago’s June field report documented how the route moves through the Southport intersection.
The greenway changes the frame of the corridor. Southport is usually understood as a north-south walk anchored by the Brown Line. Grace adds an east-west approach, placing STRONG, Rush Bowls, The Bakehouse, and the Music Box near a new neighborhood cycling connection.
Here is the clean status check:
Verified open in 2026
Operating, with no verified opening date
Temporary or interim
Announced, but not confirmed open
Closed or changing use
The pattern is more useful than the tally. Southport’s 2026 changes are building a fuller daily schedule: coffee in the morning, market shopping and retail in the afternoon, fitness throughout the day, and more film programming at night. Flexible storefronts and a permitted residential project show that some of the corridor’s next chapter is still being written.
That block-by-block attention is also how The BRAND Real Estate Group approaches the markets it serves in Downtown Vancouver, the North Shore, and West Vancouver. Details at street level shape how a property is understood, presented, and positioned.
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