Walk east on Harden Street past the old marquee at 632 and you'll see fresh garnet and black paint going up on a building that's spent the last few years cycling through tenants. Cut over to Saluda Avenue and the historic building with the postcard mural is still wrapped in scaffolding, months past when the paint was supposed to be dry. Keep walking toward Devine Street and you'll pass a tech company's zoning approval sign for a rooftop addition, and eventually a shuttered grocery store waiting on a national chain to move in. None of these are separate stories. They're the same neighborhood reorganizing itself along a line that runs straight through the fountain.
Harden Street is doubling down on being loud, young, and collegiate. Saluda Avenue and the Devine Street corridor are quietly becoming the place you go when you want a sit-down meal or a grocery run instead of a Saturday night. If you live here, that split changes which door you walk through depending on the hour, and it's worth knowing before the fall calendar fills back in.
The Marquee Has a New Owner, and a Ribbon-Cutting to Prove It
The building at 632 Harden Street has carried a large marquee since it opened as a movie theater in the 1950s, and it's been one of the most recognizable landmarks in the district ever since. New Brookland Tavern moved into the space in December 2023 after relocating from its original home on State Street in West Columbia, but the venue struggled there, including a 2024 closure over tax and licensing issues that reportedly cost it around $20,000 in canceled shows before a community fundraiser helped it recover. In March 2026, New Brookland announced it was moving again, playing its final Five Points show in May.
Its replacement is 5 Points Social, a Gamecock-owned sports bar and entertainment venue from Cocks By 90, the group behind Breakers Live and CB18, two other Five Points bars the ownership group purchased in 2023. The City of Columbia held an official grand opening and ribbon-cutting on Thursday, August 13, 2026, with Mayor Daniel Rickenmann and owner Ryan Ferguson cutting the ribbon before the doors opened to the public. A public grand opening party followed on August 15, with live music and a walkthrough of what the ownership group is calling the building's "marquee lounge." The pitch is food, drinks, sports, and live music under one roof, aimed squarely at game days and USC alumni traffic rather than a quiet weeknight dinner.
Two Doors Down, a Different Kind of Nostalgia
If 5 Points Social is chasing football Saturdays, its new neighbor at 738 Harden Street is chasing something more specific. The Game Room, a small South Carolina chain, soft-opened in the former Pannerpete Vintage space on May 6, 2026. Owner Robert Porzio stocked it with vintage gaming systems, anime merchandise, K-pop items, and collectibles, and has talked about hosting cosplay contests and trading card events, the kind of programming that pulls people in on a random Tuesday, not just after a night game.
Put those two openings next to each other and the pattern is obvious. This stretch of Harden Street isn't trying to be a food destination. It's building out a nightlife-and-fandom identity, block by block, and both the sports bar and the gaming shop are counting on foot traffic that peaks after dark or after kickoff.
Saluda Avenue Is Still Waiting on Its Own Renovation
A few doors down on Saluda Avenue, the pace looks completely different. Slip 53, a new oyster bar and coastal kitchen, was announced back in December 2025 with a target of mid-spring 2026. It's now late August and the restaurant still hasn't opened, though the buildout continues inside the former Pecknel Music Company location at 732 Saluda Avenue, the building known locally for its Postcard Mural.
The name is a nod to the building's original tenant, Gasque's Sport Shop, which opened in 1953, and the ownership group has said the renovation is being handled carefully to preserve that history rather than gut it. The concept comes from Steve Cook, who already owns Saluda's Restaurant nearby, and Casey Peissel, owner of Backstreets Grill on Devine Street. Their plan includes a raw bar, a private dining suite, and valet service, which tells you the target customer is closer to a date-night reservation than a game-day walk-in. Whatever the eventual opening date turns out to be, the project is a useful marker of what this end of the neighborhood is aiming for: slower, more expensive, and built around a sit-down meal rather than a bar crawl.
The Quiet Rezoning on Devine Street
Keep walking past Saluda and onto Devine Street and the shift becomes even clearer, because the changes here aren't about nightlife at all. Southeastern Technology Centers bought the long-vacant office building at 2221 Devine Street in April 2026 and is planning a roughly $2 million renovation. The conceptual plans call for a new partial seventh floor, swapping the building's white concrete exterior for dark metal and glass, and documents submitted to the zoning board included a rooftop restaurant as part of the redevelopment. Columbia's Board of Zoning Appeals granted the necessary height exception on May 7, 2026, clearing the way for the building to rise to just over 88 feet, well past the neighborhood's standard 75-foot limit.
Farther down Devine, near Beltline Boulevard, a different kind of daytime anchor is on the way. Sprouts Farmers Market has signed a lease to open its first Columbia location as the anchor of Devine Crossing, a roughly 40,000-square-foot redevelopment at 3818 Devine Street. The site is the former home of a Piggly Wiggly known locally as "The Social Pig," which served the surrounding Shandon, Heathwood, and Forest Acres neighborhoods for more than 50 years before closing in 2025. Sprouts isn't expected to open until 2027, but the lease signals what this stretch of Devine is becoming: a grocery-and-retail corridor for people who already live nearby, not a nightlife strip.
Here's a quick way to see how the two ends of the neighborhood are diverging:
| What's arriving | What it replaces | Street | What it's built for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Points Social | New Brookland Tavern (relocated) | Harden St. | Game days, sports, live music |
| The Game Room | Pannerpete Vintage | Harden St. | Collectibles, cosplay events, daytime browsing |
| Slip 53 | Pecknel Music Co. | Saluda Ave. | Sit-down seafood, private dining |
| Rooftop restaurant (proposed) | Vacant office tower | Devine St. | Elevated dining, daytime and evening |
| Sprouts Farmers Market | Piggly Wiggly ("The Social Pig") | Devine St. | Weekly groceries |
The Association Sees the Same Split
The Five Points Association itself seems to be organizing around this divide rather than pretending it isn't happening. The group recently hired Nyjah Mitchell as its new Events and Marketing Manager, a role focused on the concerts and festivals that keep Harden Street's foot traffic strong, alongside Cece Stucker as Beautification Manager, a Columbia native and USC graduate whose job leans toward the sidewalks, plantings, and daytime experience that matter more on the Saluda and Devine side. The Association has also brought back Five After Five, a free concert series returning this year after a seven-year hiatus, which fits squarely into the nightlife half of the neighborhood's calendar.
None of this is a coincidence. A hundred-year-old district with one fountain at its center is now effectively running two different programs, one for people who want a Saturday night out, and one for people who just want a good meal or a place to buy groceries without leaving the neighborhood.
What It Means for Your Week
If your Friday night usually starts with deciding where to go, the answer this fall is more specific than it used to be. Harden Street between roughly Blossom and Santee is where the noise is going to be, especially on football Saturdays once 5 Points Social settles in and The Game Room starts running its event nights. Saluda Avenue and the stretch of Devine Street heading toward Shandon are shaping up to be where you go when you want a table, a coffee, or eventually a grocery run that doesn't require a drive out to Forest Acres.
That's not a value judgment on either half. It's just useful to know which block you're walking toward before you decide what kind of evening you're having.
If you're already living in Five Points, Shandon, or one of the neighborhoods feeding into this corridor and you're curious how these changes are showing up in what homes nearby are actually worth, the team at Harcourts Carolinas tracks this kind of neighborhood-level shift closely. Reach out to request a home valuation or schedule a consultation, and we'll walk you through what we're seeing on the ground, block by block.
