On Coleman Boulevard this spring, a bourbon bar moved into the space that used to be Topsail. A few miles up Highway 17, a HomeSense held its ribbon cutting in a shopping center built around a Bi-Lo that had sat dark since 2019. Both changes landed in the same year, on two roads that used to be the same road, until the town built a second one to pull traffic off the first.
That split goes back to 1967, when a new bridge across the Cooper River created what locals still call the bypass, and Highway 17 took the through-traffic that used to run straight down Coleman Boulevard. The boulevard kept its identity as what the Coleman Boulevard Merchant Alliance describes as home to more locally-owned businesses than any other street in Mount Pleasant. The bypass became the town's retail spine, the road you take to get somewhere else, lined with the shopping centers that hold your Trader Joe's and your Golf Galaxy.
This year, both roads are filling back in at the same time. But they're not filling in with the same kind of business, and if you've been driving one more than the other, you've probably noticed only half the story.
The boulevard's new tenants are staying in-state
Neat Bourbon Bar opened this spring at 440 W. Coleman Blvd, the address that used to be Topsail. Owner Howard Dozier, who has spent more than twenty years in bars, nightclubs, bowling alleys and the Comedy Zone comedy club franchise, told the Post and Courier the Mount Pleasant location would stock somewhere between 250 and 300 bourbons, including rare pours like Pappy Van Winkle, WhistlePig and Blade & Bow. A glass runs anywhere from $8 to $300. Dozier opened his first Neat in Greenville in 2019 and has since added locations in Myrtle Beach and Greer, with Simpsonville and Clemson planned next. His read on why bourbon works right now: "I know the younger people aren't drinking much these days, but bourbon is a little bubble and kind of protected from that."
A few blocks away, at 341 Johnnie Dodds Blvd, the space that used to hold White Duck Taco Shop is becoming Loong Yan, a dim sum and soup dumpling concept from the team behind Chef Loong Dim Sum & Soup Dumplings. It's expected to open this fall, sometime between September and October.
Line those two up and the pattern is a specific kind of business leaving, not the same kind of business changing hands. Topsail and White Duck Taco Shop, a multi-state chain, both gave way to concepts with South Carolina roots, one already running four locations in-state and expanding further, the other extending an established Lowcountry dumpling brand into a second address a short walk from the water.
The same restaurant families keep showing back up
Down the boulevard, Giannone Eatery & Italian Market is still coming together. It's the latest project from Brian Piesner, who already owns Coastal Crust, a pizzeria that started as a food truck before it went brick-and-mortar, and Vintage Coffee Cafe. Giannone is shaping up as a wine and charcuterie bar with a bakery component, and as of mid-September the team was still posting for a kitchen manager who loves making bread. No opening date yet.
That kind of reinvestment isn't new to the area. Lola Rose, the second concept from James Beard-nominated chef Kevin Johnson and his wife Susan, who opened The Grocery in downtown Charleston back in 2011, has already staked out north Mount Pleasant. It's evidence that when an established local name expands, it tends to expand along this corridor rather than somewhere else in the region. What's different this year is the pace. Three separate operators with existing Mount Pleasant footprints are all opening or filling space within months of each other, which is a tighter window than the corridor has seen recently.
Highway 17 is filling in with a different kind of tenant entirely
The bypass side of town tells a different story. HomeSense held its Charleston-area debut on Feb. 26 at Sweetgrass Corner, the shopping center at 1909 Highway 17 near the Isle of Palms Connector. It's the retail sibling of TJ Maxx and Marshalls, and it joins Trader Joe's and Golf Galaxy Performance Center in a building that had held a Bi-Lo until that store closed in 2019. Continental Realty Corp., which owns the center, first filed plans for the HomeSense space back in 2024. That's roughly seven years between one anchor tenant leaving and its full replacement arriving, a much slower churn than what's happening a few miles south on the boulevard.
Up at Belle Hall Shopping Center on Long Point Road, Eggs Up Grill opened Aug. 17. It's technically part of a 44-location South Carolina chain, with locations from Greenville to Columbia to Myrtle Beach, but the franchisee, Cotone, is a Mount Pleasant resident. He told the paper the opportunity felt like it was meant to be, calling it a chance to return to where his entrepreneurial journey began. The business model is a chain's, but the person behind the counter lives three minutes from it.
Why this matters if you're driving either road
None of this is subtle once you notice it. The boulevard's churn is fast and its replacements are small, in-state hospitality groups betting on bourbon, dim sum, wine bars and Italian markets. The bypass's churn is slow and its replacements are national retail chains finally catching up to years-old vacancies. Both roads are busier than they were a year ago. They're just busy with different things.
That difference also shows up in how each corridor spends a fall evening. The bypass side hosts Mount Pleasant Towne Centre's Live Under The Oaks series, a free Thursday concert night running through October with local food trucks and beer and wine from Burtons Grill, the kind of programming built around a shopping center's parking lot. The boulevard side is still where Shem Creek's waterfront restaurants run their happy hours, the same stretch that's now getting a bourbon bar and a dumpling shop layered on top of what was already there.
If you've noticed a new sign going up on your regular drive down Coleman Boulevard this year, there's a decent chance it belongs to a business that's never operated outside South Carolina. If you've noticed one on your drive up Highway 17, there's a decent chance it belongs to a chain you already knew from somewhere else. Loong Yan, opening in the next few weeks in the old White Duck Taco Shop space, is the clearest test of that pattern so far. Watch which kind of storefront fills in next, and on which road.
Cindy Beasley and Daniel Burns spend their days walking these same corridors with buyers and sellers who want to know not just what a house is worth, but what kind of street it sits on. If you're curious what a specific pocket of Mount Pleasant, from the boulevard to the bypass, actually means for your next move, Work With Daniel & Cindy.
