Drive US-70 from Stage Road east toward Bartlett Boulevard on a Thursday evening in early August and the corridor tells two stories at once. West of the intersection, construction fences ring former sit-down restaurants that closed inside the last twelve months. East, the four-story frame of The Westerly at Union Depot rises above the one-story strip centers that have been there since the corridor was mostly farmland, and its ground-floor retail bays are being fit out for tenants whose signs aren't up yet.
For residents, the useful question isn't which restaurant is coming. It's which direction the corridor is tipping. The chain filings and the mixed-use build-out are answering that question in real time, and the fall event calendar at Freeman Park will bring the whole thing into focus over a single weekend in October.
The corridor's turnover, in one paragraph
Baby Jack's and Memphis Mojo Cafe both closed in July 2025 after more than a decade each in business. The former Colton's Steak House site on U.S. 64 is now slated for a 2,690-square-foot Panda Express, with developers planning to break ground in February and open by September. A new Chipotle is under construction at 6600 Stage Road inside Stage Centre. Baaloo Coffee Roaster is converting its Bartlett Road spot into an in-house-roasting café focused on Ethiopian beans. That is four separate reinvestments inside roughly a mile of pavement, three of them national or regional brands, one of them a hyper-local upgrade.
Union Depot, the piece that actually changes the shape
Union Depot sits on the 74-acre former Tennessee Baptist Children's Home property at US-70 and Stage. Developer Keith Grant of Grant & Co. is building it out as a $162 million master-planned neighborhood, and the master plan is a specific set of numbers rather than a vague promise of density.
- 336 apartment flats, primarily inside The Westerly
- 70 townhomes, with streets and utilities being finished this year
- 161 single-family homes, with Phase 2B already selling through Grant New Homes
- 55 lofts stacked above retail
- Roughly 85,000 square feet of commercial space, including three outparcels along US-70 and about 8,500 square feet inside The Westerly's ground floor
The Westerly is already leasing at 6840 Union Depot Drive, with one-bedrooms starting near $1,495 and floor plans running up to a 1,452-square-foot three-bedroom. Gill Properties, through Barry Maynard and Frank Dyer, is handling the commercial leasing. The first named restaurant tenant is Belly Acres, a Memphis burger concept taking a 5,500-square-foot endcap on The Westerly's ground floor with an outdoor dining area. It will be their third location.
The point isn't the burger. It's that this is the first time Bartlett has a walkable, mixed-use ground floor with any residential density behind it. Everything about how residents use the corridor after 6 p.m. is downstream of that.
Two arrivals, two logics
Panda Express and Chipotle are drive-through and pickup businesses. They chose sites with parking aprons and easy in-and-out. They don't care whether the person eating is walking from an apartment upstairs or turning off Stage Road on the way home from Wolfchase.
Belly Acres and Baaloo are choosing sites where somebody might already be on foot. Belly Acres told the developer they wanted the space to read as kid-friendly rather than bar-heavy, which is a bet on the family units filling The Westerly and the townhomes behind it. Baaloo's move to an in-house roasting café is a bet that Bartlett will support a slow pour-over in 2026 that it might not have in 2018.
The fastest way to read Bartlett's next five years is to watch which side of that split any given operator picks. Drive-through chain on the west side of the intersection, walk-in local on the east, and the tenants themselves telling you which future they're pricing.
Where the weekends actually happen
The corridor's commercial rhythm doesn't yet organize the calendar. Freeman Park still does. Two venues, one park, and three anchor dates carry August through early October.
| Date | Event | Venue |
|---|---|---|
| Sat, Aug 1 | Bartlett LIVE Music Series with Twin Soul | W.J. Freeman Park, 2629 Bartlett Blvd |
| Sat, Aug 22 | Small Fry Tri | Freeman Park area, 2629 Bartlett Blvd |
| Fri–Sat, Oct 2–3 | Bartlett MBN Patio BBQ Contest | W.J. Freeman Park |
The BBQ Contest is sanctioned by the Memphis Barbecue Network, and Friday night opens with live music and concessions before the judging tents go up on Saturday. If you have only been once, the useful thing to know is that the judging area sits at the white tent at the rear of the park, which is where the patio teams cluster and where the walk-around eating is best. The pavilion side, closer to Bartlett Boulevard, is where the summer concert-series bands set up at the A. Keith McDonald Pavilion at 2699 Bartlett Blvd. Same park, two different orientations.
A worked Saturday in early October
The clearest mental model for the corridor this fall is to imagine October 3, the Saturday of the BBQ Contest, from a Bartlett resident's front door.
- Coffee at the reopened Baaloo Coffee Roaster on Bartlett Road, in-house Ethiopian roast, before the parking lots fill at Freeman Park
- Mid-morning walk-through of the BBQ teams at the white judging tent, patio side, back of the park
- Late lunch back on US-70, either the new Chipotle at Stage Centre or, depending on the timing of soft openings, a stop at The Westerly's ground floor
- Late-afternoon return to Freeman Park for the pavilion side, where the concessions and live music continue into the evening
- Optional evening detour to the Bartlett Performing Arts Center at 3663 Appling Road if the fall season has opened, with the Bartlett Community Concert Band and touring tribute programming on the schedule
Nothing in that day requires driving out to Shelby Farms or Wolfchase. That's the shift. Even three years ago, a full Saturday in Bartlett without leaving Bartlett was harder to plan.
The rest of the map, briefly
Shelby Farms still handles the trails-and-open-space audience, with the Bubble Run on August 8 and the Forrest Spence 5K at Mullins Station Field on August 29. The Bartlett Performing Arts Center's calendar includes the 65-member Bartlett Community Concert Band under Dr. Rhendle Millen, along with touring acts including Sail On: The Beach Boys Tribute and a Fantasy Earth, Wind & Fire tribute performance. None of those are new. What's new is that they now sit inside a fuller weekly rhythm rather than being the only reasons to be out in the evening.
What the shape of it tells you
Bartlett's fall isn't defined by any single ribbon-cutting. It's defined by an asymmetry. The west side of the US-70 and Stage intersection is filling with drive-through national brands replacing independents that couldn't hold their leases. The east side is building a walkable ground floor for the first time. Which side gets the next tenant will tell you more about the town's next five years than any headline price update.
If you have lived here long enough to remember when the Children's Home campus sat vacant, this is the season the ground finally shifts. If you moved in last year, this is the season to notice which corners are becoming which.
For neighborhood-rooted guidance on Bartlett and the surrounding suburbs, Ware Jones can connect you with an agent who reads the corridor block by block. Connect with a Memphis neighborhood expert.
