Drive Poplar past the old Houston's site some evening and you'll see a cleared lot behind a chain-link fence, more than a year after the restaurant closed. Keep driving to Poplar Plaza and you'll find the opposite problem: a shopping center that sat half-empty for years suddenly has more going on than most East Memphis residents can track. A board game bar tripling its footprint. A charcuterie counter where you can stay and spin vinyl instead of grabbing food to go. A free pickleball setup that showed up out of nowhere.
Same street, same stretch of 2026, two completely different speeds. That's not luck. It's what happens when a single-tenant restaurant pad and the interior of an aging shopping center both go looking for tenants at the same time. One needs a company willing to commit to several thousand square feet under one roof. The other can carve itself into six garage-sized bays and lease them one at a time. If Poplar has felt stalled in some spots and oddly lively in others this year, that difference is the mechanism.
The Slow Clock: One Big Tenant, One Big Decision
Houston's operated at 5000 Poplar for more than 40 years before closing in late 2024, citing public safety and staffing challenges. The 7,570-square-foot building went up for sale in February 2025. By fall 2025, the parcel had changed hands for about $2.1 million to a Cordova-based buyer registered as 5000 Poplar LLC. A demolition permit followed that November, priced at roughly $54,000, and by February 2026 the building was gone.
What replaces it is still, genuinely, an open question. Zoning paperwork filed with Memphis and Shelby County planning shows Spell Restaurant Group, the company behind BABALU and Brookhaven Pub & Grill, is looking at the site. Founder Rick Spell, who runs SRG with his daughter Christy Spell Terry, declined to get specific when asked, saying only that "there will be appropriate times later." Separately, the team behind Briza's, Moises and Maggie Hernandez and Darrell and Betsy Horn, has been reported as planning a concept called The Tradition for the same East Memphis site: 6,300 square feet, seating for 170, part of a larger mixed-use plan. That version isn't expected to open until early 2028.
Two different operators, two different reports, one cleared lot. Whichever version turns out to be accurate, the timeline tells you something the demolition already suggested: replacing one restaurant on a corner pad is a multi-year process, not a seasonal one.
A few blocks the other direction, In-N-Out has filed a construction permit for 5341 Poplar Avenue, outlining a 3,886-square-foot restaurant with 1,100 square feet of covered patio on the site of a current gas station. No opening date has been announced. The company is known for a deliberate approach to new markets, tying expansion to supply chain proximity rather than moving fast, and it has signaled interest in four to five sites across the Memphis metro. Poplar is likely the opener, not the whole story, but there's no calendar attached to any of it yet.
The Fast Clock: A 1960s Shopping Center Rewrites Its Own Lease Strategy
Poplar Plaza, at Poplar and Highland, is one of the oldest shopping centers in the city, anchored by a Kroger that had operated there for more than 72 years as of a 2025 refinancing on the property, with 19 years remaining on its lease term at that point. That anchor isn't going anywhere. What's changed is everything around it.
Owner Finard Properties announced a new leasing strategy this August built around what the company is calling "dwell time," the idea of getting people to stay in the center longer rather than just pass through it. Reporting from the Daily Memphian laid out the shift in detail, and the tenant list already reflects it. Board to Beers, a local board game bar, is relocating into the former McAlister's Deli space and more than tripling its previous footprint. Feast & Graze, paired with HighP Hour Wellness, is running a charcuterie and wellness concept where you can grab food to go or stay and spin vinyl while you eat. The center also ran a free, six-month pickleball concept as part of the same push to keep people on-site longer.
The biggest piece is "The Angle," the corner space that sat empty since the old Spin Street record store closed in 2017. Finard is retrofitting the 14,015-square-foot building into six smaller bays aimed at local tenants rather than one big-box replacement, backed by a $25.1 million refinancing secured in 2025 specifically to fund that repositioning.
Here's the difference in one table:
| Single-tenant pad sites (Houston's, In-N-Out lot) | Shopping center interior (Poplar Plaza) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who has to say yes | One company, one lease, one big commitment | Several small operators, signed independently |
| Typical timeline | Years, sometimes with no date attached | Months, once the strategy is set |
| What's confirmed right now | A cleared lot and an unbuilt permit | Board to Beers moving in, Feast & Graze open, pickleball running |
| What's still unresolved | Which operator, which year | Which of the six new bays fills next |
The Even Slower Clock Running Underneath Both
There's a third pace worth knowing about, because it explains why neither of the above is moving faster. The Poplar Corridor Business District Association of Owners has held a tax-increment financing mechanism since 2018, awarded through the county's economic development arm to fund infrastructure and walkability improvements along Poplar from I-240 to Kirby Parkway. The first actual construction, a streetscape facelift along Ridgeway Road and Shady Grove Road between Park Place Centre and Briarcrest, didn't break ground until five years after the incentive was approved. Public infrastructure on this corridor moves slower than either private redevelopment story above, which is worth remembering the next time a sidewalk project looks stalled. It usually is, by design, because the financing is built to accrue before it spends.
What To Actually Watch For This Fall
If you live near Poplar and want to know what's real versus what's still paperwork, here's where things stand:
- Reported as open or running: Feast & Graze X HighP Hour Wellness at Poplar Plaza, and the center's temporary six-month pickleball concept.
- Confirmed and in motion: Board to Beers' move into the former McAlister's space, and the six-bay buildout at The Angle, both tied to Finard's dwell-time strategy announced this August.
- Filed but undated: In-N-Out's permit at 5341 Poplar, with no construction start or opening announced.
- Unresolved entirely: what actually gets built at 5000 Poplar, and by whom, with one reported version pointing to 2028.
None of that is a reason to expect Poplar to look dramatically different by Thanksgiving. It's a reason to know which changes are worth watching for this season and which ones are still years out, no matter how often the cleared lot makes it look otherwise.
If you're weighing what any of this means for a home near the corridor, or you're just trying to figure out which changes actually affect daily life on Poplar versus which ones are still speculation, Brittany Myers and the team at Myers Cobb Realtors know this stretch of East Memphis block by block. Reach out when you're ready to talk about it.
