Why Evans Towne Center Restaurants Keep Gathering Here

For three years, the second floor of the Meybohm building at Evans Towne Center sat empty. It is not a bad space. Two stories, a corner unit, windows that look straight out over Evans Towne Center Park and the Columbia County Performing Arts Center. The kind of view a restaurant would normally kill for. Instead, after Stay Social Tap and Table closed there in 2022, nobody touched it. Not until a couple who already run three Mellow Mushroom locations in the CSRA decided the vacancy itself was the tell.

That is the real story sitting underneath the past year and a half of restaurant news in Evans. It is not that a handful of new places opened. It is that the operators choosing to open here are making a specific bet, and it is a different bet than the one being made along Washington Road.

The tavern that waited for the right owners

Shawn and Katy Ledford opened Towne Center Tavern on April 1, 2025, at 7025 Evans Town Center Blvd, in that same long-vacant second-floor corner. They are not first-time restaurant operators guessing at what a growing suburb wants. They have run Mellow Mushroom in the Augusta area since 2003, including a location right in Evans, which means they had years of daily proof of what people in this town order, complain about, and come back for.

Their answer was not another franchise. Ledford has been direct about why he picked that particular space.

"I really just kind of fell in love with this location, with the foot traffic being from the park and the performing arts center."

The menu backs up the neighborhood-tavern pitch rather than a formula: hand-cut fries, a Steak Dipper built from sliced ribeye and provolone on a hoagie, a TCT Dipper of smoked meatloaf and gouda on a Cuban roll, smoked baby back ribs, and a full bar that includes a frozen Irish coffee regulars keep mentioning unprompted. The restaurant opened for dinner only during Masters week 2025, then added lunch once the tournament crowds cleared. By that August, Ledford was telling a local TV crew the bigger problem was keeping up with demand, not creating it.

A two-story space with a park view does not sit vacant for three years because nobody wanted a restaurant there. It sits vacant because it takes an operator willing to build something specific to that corner, not a concept imported from somewhere else and dropped into an empty box.

The investor who refused to share a building

If Towne Center Tavern was one data point, what broke ground nearby in October 2025 is the pattern confirming it. Nordhavn Rustik is going up at 406 Town Park Blvd, near the Ponder Place Office Park, as a standalone building, roughly 6,000 square feet, built in a Scandinavian architectural style. Investors had targeted a summer 2026 opening, which puts the doors swinging open right around now.

One of the investing partners is Dr. John Bojescul, a retired Army colonel and orthopedic surgeon. When asked why the group chose to build alone rather than lease space inside an existing plaza, he did not hedge.

"All the other restaurants are in a building, or you've got to share it with somebody. So I didn't want to share."

The building runs two concepts under one roof without sharing the roof with anyone else. Nordhavn is the fine-dining side, a menu built around German, Danish, and Norwegian influences, roughly 70 percent seafood and 30 percent meat, with the possibility of wild game like elk or bison on the menu. Rustik operates during the day as a European-style bakery and deli, fresh bread, pastries, sandwiches, and coffee.

This is not a franchise scout filling a territory map. It is a surgeon and his partners betting real construction dollars on a specific quarter mile of Evans, choosing to build from the ground up rather than take whatever lease was available.

Why the park and the arts center keep showing up in the same sentence

Two separate ownership groups, describing two different restaurants, both point to the same two landmarks as the reason they picked their location: Evans Towne Center Park and the Columbia County Performing Arts Center. That is not a coincidence worth shrugging off. It is the actual mechanism behind why this corridor is filling in while other retail spaces in the area sit static.

The Performing Arts Center, at 1000 Market St, seats 2,100 people. Its fall 2026 calendar alone is not a quiet local rotation. It includes:

• Daniel Tosh, October 14, 2026
• Air Supply, October 15, 2026
• Zach Williams, November 13, 2026

Jason Mraz and John Crist are also on the venue's booked lineup for the 2026 to 2027 season. A 2,100-seat house pulling that kind of touring talent does not empty out onto a parking lot at 10 p.m. It empties out onto a corridor with a tavern that has an outdoor patio facing the park and a bakery-and-fine-dining building going up nearby.

Even Columbia County's Winston's Tavern, which opened in October 2025 near the Performing Arts Center, is leaning on the same logic. Its owner has described the location explicitly as a destination for pre-show dinners and date nights tied to the venue's calendar, noting the area gets especially busy around events like the annual holiday tree lighting and the ice rink. Three separate restaurant concepts, three separate ownership groups, all orienting themselves around the same public square. That is a pattern, not a string of unrelated openings.

Washington Road is still playing a different game

None of this means the rest of Evans dining is standing still. It is growing too, just on different logic. Biscuit Belly, a Kentucky-based Southern breakfast and brunch concept, announced in June 2026 that it is planting a location at 4274 Washington Rd, describing Evans as one of the CSRA's most family-friendly communities. Eggs Up Grill opened its first CSRA location in Evans at the Shoppes at Evans Towne Park, part of a four-location development deal that will bring additional stores to North Augusta, Augusta, and Aiken.

Those are franchise plays following arterial traffic counts on Washington Road and Belair Road, the same corridors that have carried chain retail in Evans for years. There is nothing wrong with that model. It is just a different bet than the one being made a short drive away, where operators are building around foot traffic from a park bench and a box office rather than a four-lane road.

Knowing the difference matters if you actually live here. If you want a quick breakfast before work, Washington Road is still your strip. If you are looking for something to do on a Friday night that does not require driving into Augusta, the stretch between the park and the Performing Arts Center is where the newest, most locally invested rooms are opening, and where at least one more is still under construction. Nordhavn Rustik is worth watching for over the next few weeks if a fine-dining reservation near home is on your radar, since it will be the most architecturally distinct building to open in that corridor yet.

The three-year vacancy that sat empty until the Ledfords took it is the detail that explains all of this. A good space does not fill itself. It waits for someone who already understands the neighborhood well enough to bet on it without a franchise playbook to fall back on. That is what has been happening one block at a time around Evans Towne Center Park, and it is worth noticing next time you drive past.

If you are watching Evans grow and thinking about what it means for your own next move, whether that is upsizing closer to the action or just keeping an eye on where the neighborhood is heading, Tonda Booker Real Estate Group knows this corridor block by block. Let's Start a Conversation.