"We need a neighborhood restaurant over here," Fred Richardson said, describing why he spent much of the past year working to reopen the building at 2719 Rosewood Drive. He wasn't talking about bringing back what used to be there. He was talking about something else entirely, and that distinction is the part most people walking past that building this fall are still getting wrong.
For 40-plus years, 2719 Rosewood Drive was Rockaway Athletic Club, a sign-less brick building on the corner of Howard Street that turned a pimento cheeseburger into a regional landmark. Food & Wine named it the best burger in South Carolina in 2021. President George W. Bush stopped by in 2005. The bar closed for good on January 18, 2024, after brothers Paul and Forrest Whitlark sold the building to Cason Development Group, and it sat empty for roughly two years while Rosewood residents wondered what would take its place.
The answer arrived in two pieces, in two different buildings, and neither one is a burger bar in the way Rockaway was.
What's Actually Moving Into 2719 Rosewood Drive
Richardson already runs Bang Back Pinball Lounge in Five Points, and in January 2026 he secured the lease on the old Rockaway space to open a second location under the name Bang Back Bar and Grill. It opened in late June 2026, and the concept leans toward family, not dive bar. The Rosewood location is built around a bigger arcade than the Five Points original, with 12 to 14 pinball machines plus video games, Skee-Ball, Super Chexx Bubble Hockey, and Big Buck Hunter cabinets, alongside an expanded food menu and weekend brunch.
The kitchen partnership is worth knowing if you live nearby: Bang Back is sourcing its bread from Sour & Salt Bakery at 2761 Rosewood Drive, the small sourdough bakery two doors down that's built a following for its loaves and pastries. That's not incidental. Richardson has said the goal is a business that works with its neighbors rather than around them, which matters in a building whose previous tenant helped launch two of Rosewood's signature community events, the Rosewood Crawfish Festival and the Art & Music Festival, both now run by the Greater Rosewood Merchants Association. The building's civic footprint was always bigger than its menu. Richardson seems to be picking up that thread rather than the burger.
Getting the lease signed wasn't simple, either. Richardson's plans stalled for a stretch when he lost the liquor liability policy he'd held for years, after his insurer left South Carolina altogether. He and his team were prepared to open beer, wine and sake only if they had to before securing a new policy. It's a reminder that a restaurant reopening on a strip like Rosewood Drive isn't only a real estate story. Insurance markets, staffing and construction timelines all have to line up before a sign goes back up.
The Actual Burger Revival Is Three Doors Down
If you want the Rockaway lineage, don't look at 2719. Look at 2701 Rosewood Drive, the former Crust Bakehouse space, where chef Kipp Shives has been trying to reopen a standalone version of his diner for going on six years.
Shives originally opened Granby Grill in March 2020 near the Olympia Mills apartments, right as the pandemic forced an immediate pivot to carry-out. The restaurant reopened for dine-in, then a pipe burst in a neighboring apartment and flooded the building badly enough to force an official shutdown in September 2023. Granby Grill stayed closed until 2025, when Shives relaunched it as a ghost kitchen inside Lucky's, a Five Points bar, under a new name: Granby Burger.
As of March 2026, Shives was aiming to open the Rosewood storefront in July or August, with the explicit goal of being open in time for the first USC football game of the season. He plans to keep running the Lucky's kitchen too, rebranded as Lucky's Wing Shack and focused on wings, so the Granby name will effectively be operating out of two buildings for a while. Whether the Rosewood location made its summer target by the time you're reading this is worth checking directly, since a five-year run of pandemic, flood and ghost-kitchen detours has a way of pushing dates. But the intent is clear: the burger identity that Rosewood lost when Rockaway closed isn't dead, it just relocated a few storefronts away under a different name and a different owner.
A Cuisine the Corridor Didn't Have Before
Farther down the same road, near where Rosewood Drive crosses toward Devine Street and Garners Ferry Road, a third change has nothing to do with burgers at all. Silver Spoon Tavern opened at 4478 Rosewood Drive this spring, in a building that had cycled through Alley Street Eats and, years before that, Moe's Grapevine. The menu runs tandoori, biryani and curries prepared fresh daily, and the restaurant's early social media posts described it as being in a soft opening phase, with bar service planned but not yet available at launch.
That stretch of Rosewood Drive carries close to 19,000 cars a day according to state Department of Transportation figures, which is a useful number if you're trying to understand why a stretch of road that already has a Publix-anchored shopping center keeps drawing new restaurant investment. Traffic counts that high don't guarantee a concept survives, but they explain why operators keep trying.
Three Addresses, Three Timelines
| Address | What Was There | What's There Now | Status as of Fall 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2719 Rosewood Dr | Rockaway Athletic Club (1982–2024) | Bang Back Bar and Grill | Opened late June 2026 |
| 2701 Rosewood Dr | Crust Bakehouse | Granby Burger | Targeted July/August 2026 opening |
| 4478 Rosewood Dr | Alley Street Eats / Moe's Grapevine | Silver Spoon Tavern | Opened spring 2026, soft-opening phase |
Laid out this way, the pattern is less "Rosewood lost a restaurant and gained one back" and more "Rosewood's commercial strip absorbed one closure by splitting it into three separate bets." One address inherited the community-event legacy and turned it into a family arcade. Another inherited the food itself and moved it a hundred yards away. A third brought in a cuisine the corridor never had, in a building that had already changed hands twice since a beloved Asian restaurant left.
What This Means for the Next Few Months
If you've been avoiding the 2700 block because the building on the corner has looked dark for two years, that's no longer accurate. Bang Back's brunch and arcade setup gives the block a reason to stop in on a weekend afternoon that has nothing to do with reliving Rockaway's late-night trivia crowd. If you're specifically chasing the pimento cheeseburger memory, Granby Burger a few doors down is the one to watch, though it's worth calling ahead or checking the Granby Burger Facebook page before making a special trip, since the July/August target sat inside a project that has already slipped multiple times since 2020.
And if you haven't been down to the Devine Street end of Rosewood Drive in a while, Silver Spoon Tavern is new enough that plenty of longtime residents haven't tried it yet either.
None of this required a single new building. Three tenants moved into three addresses that already existed, on a road residents drive every day whether or not they're paying attention to who's behind the counter this year.
If you're weighing what a stretch of commercial turnover like this means for property values or rental demand along Rosewood Drive, that's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks it block by block. Harcourts Carolinas works this corridor and the neighborhoods on either side of it, Rosewood and Shandon, and can walk you through what a changing commercial strip typically does to the residential streets around it.
