For years, a Saturday in Dunwoody was a choice. You could stay near the Village for dinner, or you could point the car at Perimeter Center for something bigger. This summer, that choice quietly disappeared. Between January and July, one hospitality group consolidated its hold on the Village courtyard, four new tenants signed for the shopping center two miles up the road, and the Perimeter side of town finished enough of its long-promised town center that residents are treating it like one.
The result, for anyone who already lives here, is a compact evening loop. Farmers market, concert on the lawn, dinner, dueling pianos, all within a radius most residents can bike. Here is what changed, and how to string it together.
The Village Is Now One Operator's Neighborhood
The biggest shift is who runs the room. DASH Hospitality Group founder David Abes opened his first Dunwoody Village establishment, Bar{n} booze {n} bites, in November 2021, and has since added Morty's Meat & Supply, Message In A Bottle, and Good Vibes ice cream and soda pop shop to the area he christened "Funwoody." In April, he added a fourth full concept.
Southern restaurant {S}table Comfort Food {n} Cocktails, backed by DASH Hospitality Group, opened April 9 at Dunwoody Village. It sits at 1317 Dunwoody Village Pkwy and runs Tuesday through Sunday, 4 to 10 p.m. The menu is not a rehash of the group's other spots. Starters include a Southern Lazy Susan cheese and charcuterie board, barbecue pulled pork dumplings, and Carolina crab dip, with entrees like buttermilk fried chicken, Georgia mountain trout "pecandine," and twin whole-roasted quails served with cornbread dressing.
The space matters because of what it replaced. Casual steakhouse Steak & Grace abruptly closed January 22 after about ten months in business, opened and operated by Barry Mills of Big B's Fish Joint in Chastain Park, and the roughly 3,500 square foot restaurant was resold with plans to reopen in April. A steakhouse that never caught on became a Southern restaurant from the operator who already understood the courtyard's foot traffic.
Two doors down, Morty's grew. The Morty's expansion opened into the old dentist office next door and includes a stage for weekly karaoke and dueling piano shows. A dueling piano bar opened on March 6, 2026, bringing sing-along performances, and to accommodate the new programming Morty's expanded its building to create the Smokehouse Stage, with performances delivered by Atlanta Dueling Pianos in partnership with Atlanta Music Agency's Joshua Gray Hamilton.
Why this matters if you already live here: three of the four restaurants you are most likely to walk into on a Friday are now programmed by the same person, which is why the courtyard's calendar suddenly reads coherent instead of piecemeal. Live music runs Fridays and Saturdays every week, 6 to 9 p.m., at the Funwoody Courtyard at 5521 Chamblee Dunwoody Rd.
The Shops Of Dunwoody Are Filling In The Gaps
Two miles north on Chamblee Dunwoody Road, the other half of the Village is under new ownership and finally moving. Charlotte-based Asana Partners, the former owners of Krog District along the Atlanta Beltline, bought The Shops of Dunwoody in March last year, and since that purchase has refreshed branding and added new signage. That is the same operator that turned an industrial stretch of the Beltline into a destination, now applying its playbook to a suburban strip.
In June the tenant list arrived. JLL leasing officials announced The Shops of Dunwoody will soon be home to Tenku Sushi, Sweat440, Jetset Pilates, and Beyond Juicery + Eatery, with the signings totaling 8,600 square feet. The new tenants join existing operators including Summit Coffee, Dunwoody Tavern, Nai Thai Cuisine, Vintage Pizzeria, and Porter Brew & Que. The tenants are expected to open through the summer and fall of 2026.
The mix is telling. Two fitness studios, a fast-casual health concept, and a sushi restaurant land in a center that already has coffee, a tavern, Thai, pizza, and a brewpub. For a resident, that adds up to a place where morning workout, lunch, and a weeknight dinner can all sit on the same block without the drive down to Perimeter.
High Street Is Finally A Place You Can Walk Into
The other node has taken longer, and it is not finished. Developer GID Development Group has wrapped phase one of the $2 billion, 36-acre High Street project and is already gearing up for what comes next, with hundreds of new apartments, a sizable office building, and a slate of destination retail now open, and strong early leasing including a headline corporate commitment. The Atlanta Business Chronicle cast the TriNet deal as a standout transaction in a period of tepid office leasing, and Bisnow called it the biggest Atlanta office lease of 2025.
For a resident, what matters is the tenant list, not the square footage. Velvet Taco sits at the corner of Middle Street and Perimeter Center Parkway within GID Development Group's mixed-use destination High Street. Nando's Peri-Peri Chicken is open, offering flame-grilled chicken marinated in a signature peri-peri sauce. The NOW Massage has opened its fifth metro Atlanta location, offering three Swedish-inspired massage styles. Coming next: Varuni Napoli, one of Atlanta's most celebrated Neapolitan pizzerias, whose High Street debut will mark the brand's first outpost outside the Perimeter. Puttshack anchors the entertainment side.
The zoning story running underneath this is worth knowing if you own nearby. The developer is seeking city approval to replace a planned apartment building with additional retail, restaurant, and office space, and the plan would also "open up" the development, currently closed off by a wall of buildings along Perimeter Center Parkway. The Dunwoody Planning Commission is scheduled to consider the request in August. Translation: the piece of High Street that currently reads as a wall from the street is likely to become permeable within the next planning cycle.
The Concert Lawn Is Still The Best Part
None of this replaces the reason people already move to Dunwoody, which is the park in the middle of it. Located at 4770 North Peachtree Road, at 110 acres, Brook Run Park is the largest park in not only Dunwoody, but the region. The concerts take place at Brook Run Park in the amphitheater, which is conveniently located along the Dunwoody Trailway.
The 2026 Groovin' on the Green schedule is deliberately compact. The concerts are on second Saturdays of the month this year, except for July, and run from June through October. All concerts begin at 6 p.m., are family friendly, and include food and drink concessions. The one date to put on the calendar this month:
- August 8, Brook Run Park Amphitheater. The Back to School Celebration at Brook Run Park with Herd Behavior and M80s.
Storefronts are part of the same programming. From May 1 through August 31, the Storefront Art Exhibit showcases artwork by Dunwoody High School students in windows of local businesses, with Create Dunwoody promoting the temporary exhibit and creating a Storefront Art Tour Map. A Saturday morning walk through the Village with the map in hand is genuinely a different errand than a Saturday morning walk without it.
A Saturday In Order
Here is how the pieces connect for a resident who wants to test the loop this month.
- 9 a.m., Dunwoody Farmers Market or a coffee at Valor. Bar(N), Morty's Meat and Supply, Message in a Bottle, and the Yoffi food truck sit in the Dunwoody Village Courtyard, while Valor Coffee is just around the corner.
- 10 a.m., Storefront Art Tour. Walk the Village with the map through August 31.
- Noon, lunch at The Shops of Dunwoody. Summit Coffee, Dunwoody Tavern, or Vintage Pizzeria today. Beyond Juicery + Eatery or Tenku Sushi once the summer signings open.
- 4 p.m., Brook Run for the concert. Second Saturdays, June through October. August 8 is the Back to School Celebration.
- 7:30 p.m., dinner at {S}table. Southern comfort food, opens at 4 Tuesday through Sunday.
- 10 p.m., dueling pianos at Morty's Smokehouse Stage. Reservation driven.
- Or, swap the last two: Perimeter side. Velvet Taco or Nando's for dinner, Puttshack after.
The distance from the {S}table patio to the Brook Run amphitheater is under two miles. The distance from Brook Run to High Street is under three. The point of this summer's changes is that the same night can now include both without feeling stretched.
What This Means Next Year
One update lands in 2027 rather than this summer, and residents who blink will miss the announcement: Saints + Council will expand from Midtown to Dunwoody with a second location in 2027, a New American restaurant set to open a 7,800-square-foot space at Perimeter Mall. Read alongside the Block 6 rezoning request at High Street and the Shops of Dunwoody signings still under negotiation, the pattern is consistent. Perimeter is filling its retail vacancies with operators from intown, and the Village is deepening rather than expanding.
If you have been in Dunwoody long enough to remember when the Village was mostly errands, that shift is the story of the season.
If you already own here and are starting to wonder what the last four years of Village and Perimeter investment have done to comparable sales on your street, that is a conversation the team at David Lawhon is glad to have. Schedule a Consultation whenever you are ready to look at the numbers behind the neighborhood.