The new Publix on Bill Gardner Parkway has been open since late January. Most people who shop there probably haven't noticed that a few hundred yards away, near the outlet mall, a burger franchise just signed a lease for a spot that doesn't exist yet. Or that a few miles in the other direction, on Cleveland Street, the city just finished restoring a decades-old shortening company mural in a pocket park most people drive past without a second look.
None of these three things were planned together. A grocery chain doesn't coordinate with a burger franchisee. A franchisee doesn't coordinate with a Main Street beautification board. But line them up against a map of Locust Grove and a pattern shows up that nobody announced: this city is assembling two separate commercial centers at the same time, and they're pulling in different directions.
The Corridor Gets Its Second Grocery Anchor
Publix opened its new Locust Grove store on January 28, 2026, a standard full-service format with a deli counter, an expanded produce section, and a floral department, the kind of store that becomes someone's default within a few weeks of moving in. That alone would be a small piece of local news. What makes it worth a longer look is what's coming next to the same stretch of road.
A short distance away, at the intersection of Highway 155 and Bill Gardner Parkway, a Kroger Marketplace-anchored shopping center is under development, with the anchor store targeted to open in late 2026. The project, being brought to market by commercial real estate firm Southeastern, also includes roughly 12,500 square feet of additional retail space for lease and outparcels available for ground lease or sale. Two full-service grocery anchors, opening within roughly a year of each other, both sitting along the same interstate-adjacent corridor.
That's not a coincidence of timing so much as a signal about where growth is landing. Locust Grove sits at Exit 212 on I-75, where the interstate itself carries close to 90,000 vehicles a day and the five-lane stretch of Bill Gardner Parkway connecting I-75 to Highway 42 already tops 23,000 vehicles on an average day. The city has plans underway to widen Bill Gardner Parkway from two lanes to four or six lanes on the west side of the interstate, toward Highway 155 and the City of Hampton. Retailers go where the traffic already is. Right now, that's this corridor, not the historic downtown a mile or so east.
The Space Between the Anchors Is Filling In
Big grocery anchors tend to pull smaller tenants in behind them, and that's already happening. Wayback Burgers, the Connecticut-founded fast-casual chain, has signed a lease for a location at the Locust Grove Shops on Market Place Boulevard, expected to open in late 2026. The franchise will be run by Willie and Phyllis Watson, with Willie bringing more than four decades of quick-service restaurant experience, including time with McDonald's and later as a Steak 'n Shake franchisee. It will be the chain's twelfth Georgia location, an 1,800-square-foot restaurant with a patio, built around the brand's signature "Cheeeesy" double-patty burger.
It's a small addition on its own. But set next to the Publix that just opened and the Kroger Marketplace still under construction, it reads less like an isolated franchise deal and more like retailers filling in the gaps around two grocery anchors that are already drawing cars off the interstate.
Here's the geography that ties it together:
- Publix — opened January 28, 2026, on Bill Gardner Parkway
- Kroger Marketplace-anchored center — Highway 155 at Bill Gardner Parkway, anchor targeted for late 2026
- Wayback Burgers — Locust Grove Shops, Market Place Boulevard, targeted for late 2026
- FoodeesFest (Food & Culture Festival) — Tanger Outlets Locust Grove, October 2 through 4, 2026
Every one of those addresses sits within a few blocks of the same interchange. None of them are downtown.
Cleveland Street Is Building Something Else Entirely
Meanwhile, a different kind of investment has been happening on the other side of town, and it isn't retail at all. Locust Grove's historic Main Street district, which joined the Georgia Main Street network back in 2006, has spent the last stretch funding small-scale beautification rather than commercial square footage. Two projects stand out: the installation of a new Grove mural on Cleveland Street, and the restoration of the older Snowdrift Shortening mural in Mayor's Walk Park.
Mayor's Walk Park is a downtown pocket park with tables, seating, paved public parking, and public restrooms, and it doubles as a small stage for pop-up musicians during downtown events. A third mural, painted by local artist Susie Aruffo, sits in Locust Grove City Park and gives families a backdrop near the playground and picnic area.
None of this is large-scale by commercial development standards. The city's facade grant program through Main Street Inc. caps out at a $1,500 match per building, up to $3,000 total, money aimed at storefronts and public art rather than anchor tenants. But it's consistent, and it's the kind of spending that only makes sense if the goal is foot traffic on foot, not traffic counts on Bill Gardner Parkway.
A grocery chain and a burger franchise are betting on cars pulling off I-75. A mural fund and a pocket park are betting on people parking once and walking around. Locust Grove is funding both bets at the same time.
The One Weekend Where the Two Sides Overlap, Sort Of
If there's a moment where these two versions of Locust Grove come closest to touching, it's the first weekend of October. FoodeesFest, a traveling food and culture festival, is bringing its three-day event to Tanger Outlets Locust Grove from October 2 through 4, 2026, with more than 40 food trucks and vendors, free admission, and a broader vendor lineup that includes artisans, crafters, and non-food retail.
It's worth noticing where that festival is actually happening. Tanger Outlets sits on the same side of town as the Publix, the incoming Kroger Marketplace, and the future Wayback Burgers, not on Cleveland Street near the murals and the pocket park. Even the city's biggest single weekend of foot traffic this fall is landing on the parkway side of town, not downtown. If anything, it reinforces the split rather than closing it.
What This Means If You Live Here
None of this changes what Locust Grove is. It's still a city built around a historic Main Street with a name that goes back to a grove of locust trees that once stood throughout town, now sitting a few miles from a highway corridor that keeps adding square footage. But it does change how a Saturday actually works if you live here.
Errands increasingly have a clear answer: the parkway side of town for groceries, quick-service food, and anything anchored to Bill Gardner Parkway or Highway 155. A slower morning, coffee, a walk, something to look at, increasingly has a different answer: Cleveland Street and the two blocks around Mayor's Walk Park, where the murals and the pocket park benches are the point rather than the parking lot.
That split isn't a problem to solve. Plenty of towns this size eventually end up with a commercial corridor and a preserved historic core doing different jobs. What's worth knowing, if you live in Locust Grove or you're paying attention to it, is that the split is happening right now, in real time, driven by a grocery chain's real estate strategy on one side and a Main Street board's mural budget on the other. Nobody at either table is talking to the other one. The city is just quietly becoming two places at once.
If you're watching how a neighborhood like this changes shape, block by block and lease by lease, that's the kind of pattern we track for clients across Henry County every day. If you have questions about what's happening in Locust Grove or anywhere else in our service area, reach out to The Legacy Real Estate Group. We're local, we're paying attention, and we're happy to talk through what we're seeing.
