Stand in the parking lot at Randolph and Sharon Amity on a Tuesday morning in July and the churn is visible. Fresh paper covers the windows of the old Sycamore building. A construction dumpster sits behind Piada. A leasing sign points at a pad site nobody expected to be back on the market six months ago.
If you already live in Cotswold, none of the individual updates are news. Put them next to each other and a pattern shows up: the shopping center you use to grab a rotisserie chicken and a birthday card is being quietly rebuilt around restaurants.
One $110.4M bet behind the churn
Asana Partners bought the 21.7-acre shopping center from Site Centers Corp., which had paid $37 million in 2011, for $110.4 million in 2023. Since its debut in 1963, Cotswold has evolved from one of the city's first suburban malls into an open-air center, and the new owner has been unwinding the mid-century auto-oriented layout ever since.
That is not a rhetorical flourish. It is the language in the rezoning file. Asana applied for rezoning of a 0.39-acre piece of the parking lot from commercial center to neighborhood center, arguing the NC district would allow the shopping center to transition from a mid-century, auto-oriented layout to a more pedestrian-friendly one. Read alongside the tenant moves below, the rezoning is the connective tissue.
What's opening, and when
Two restaurant leases are the headline story of 2026.
| Tenant | Size | Target open | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inizio Pizza Napoletana | 2,800 sf | Q1 2026 | Local (5th location) |
| Kitchen Social | 4,157 sf + 1,000 sf patio | January 2027 | Columbus, OH |
Inizio Pizza Napoletana leased a 2,800-square-foot space at Cotswold Village with plans to open there in the first quarter of 2026. The brand already runs locations in Ballantyne, Dilworth, Fort Mill and Huntersville, making Cotswold its fifth. For a resident who has watched the Neapolitan pizza wave land in every other in-town neighborhood, Cotswold finally getting its own is less a novelty than a catch-up.
Kitchen Social is the more interesting arrival because it is not a Charlotte concept at all. The Columbus, Ohio group is planning its first Charlotte location and its second out-of-state site at 104 S. Sharon Amity Road in Cotswold Village, with co-owner Brian O'Malley targeting a January 2027 opening. The Charlotte location will be a 4,200-square-foot space with a 1,000-square-foot patio. The deal plants the brand's open-kitchen, scratch-made menu near the Sharon Amity and Randolph intersection, in a footprint big enough to matter to weekend traffic in the whole center.
Two openings on their own would be a rounding error. Two openings inside twelve months, in a center that has historically leaned on national soft-goods retailers, is a signal.
The freestanding pad nobody expected to be vacant
Then there is the building at 262–282 S. Sharon Amity, off Randolph near Thai House and Dairy Queen.
Sycamore Brewing had announced in spring 2025 that it was moving in with a family-friendly beer garden, kid's menu, table service, brunch, live music, and community events. The taproom was planned at 7,000 square feet, with a beer garden over 10,000 square feet. Anyone who saw the Instagram post remembers the pitch.
Then the story broke. Sycamore's co-founder Justin Brigham was arrested on child sex charges December 11, and the lease for the under-construction taproom and beer garden was terminated in the following weeks. The brewery filed with the state in January to rename its LLC "Club West Brewing," and a teaser site hinted at a new venture coming to Charlotte in spring 2026.
For Cotswold residents, the practical question is what fills that pad. Thrift Commercial Real Estate Services is now marketing the property at Cotswold Village, aiming to lock in a lease with another food-and-drink establishment, and Charles Thrift told Axios that interest is "extremely bullish". The building is essentially ready to hand off. In a market where a from-scratch buildout runs eighteen months, that matters.
Read the three tenant moves together and the through-line is obvious: Asana is filling the center with sit-down and fast-casual food rather than another apparel box.
The block just outside the center
The 2026 story is not confined to Asana's property line. A short drive east, on Halifax Street between Cotswold and Oakhurst, Common Market Oakwold is opening in 2026 at 807 Halifax St as a deli, bar, and bottle shop with made-to-order sandwiches and house-prepared sides. Breakfast will be served daily with locally roasted coffee from Magnolia and Enderly, plus grab-and-go items sourced from Pasta & Provisions and Windy Hill Farm, and the space is planned with a dog-friendly patio.
Common Market is a Plaza Midwood original, and its arrival at the Cotswold/Oakhurst seam tells you where the neighborhood's daily-use foot traffic is heading. It also gives residents a legitimate walk-or-bike destination that is not the center itself, which is the piece that has always been missing.
The rest of the everyday map has not moved. Reid's inside Cotswold Village still handles the specialty grocery and wine run. Leroy Fox at 705 S. Sharon Amity is still the fried-chicken-and-a-beer default. Thai House at 110 S. Sharon Amity is still the weeknight standby. Piada, Chick-fil-A, Harris Teeter, and Publix hold their usual slots. What is changing is the number of reasons to be at Randolph and Sharon Amity after 6 p.m.
The greenway question, answered
The other thing residents ask about is whether the county is ever going to connect the fragmented greenway pieces east of Uptown. The answer, in 2026, is finally yes.
The Briar Creek Greenway Central to Monroe project runs 1.6 miles of new multi-use trail from Central Avenue/Masonic Drive to Monroe Road, with key access points at Bay St., Laburnum Ave., Chantilly Park, Bramlet Rd., and Monroe Rd. It represents an approximate $11.3 million capital investment by Mecklenburg County, and once complete will bridge the gap between existing Briar Creek segments and Monroe Road, linking to the Little Sugar Creek Greenway near Tyvola Rd.
Timing matters here. A Notice to Proceed with construction was issued on August 18, 2025, and Phase 1 from Bay Street in Chantilly to Monroe Road began construction in Summer 2025 with anticipated completion in Mid 2026. If you have been running the disconnected Briar Creek segment near the Mint Museum Randolph and wondering where the rest of it was, the answer is that the rest is being poured this year.
What to actually do with this
For a current Cotswold resident, the practical takeaways are small and specific:
- If you have been driving to Dilworth for Inizio, stop doing that after Q1.
- The old Sycamore building will announce a new tenant before it announces a rebrand. Watch the Thrift CRE signage for the concept name.
- Common Market Oakwold's 807 Halifax address is inside a comfortable walk from most of Cotswold's northern blocks. Plan the route now.
- Phase 1 of the greenway opens up a Bay Street access point that most Cotswold residents have never had reason to use.
The bigger point is one most weekend errand runs will not surface on their own. The center you have been shopping at since it was built as a mid-century mall is being rebuilt as a restaurant-first neighborhood core, and the tenant lineup landing between now and January 2027 is the moment that repositioning becomes obvious from the sidewalk. If you own a home within a mile of Randolph and Sharon Amity, the ground under your daily routine is being resurfaced, quietly, one lease at a time.
If you are thinking through what any of this means for a Cotswold home you already own, or one you have been eyeing on a quieter street off Sharon Amity, the team at Real Estate Layne is happy to talk through it. Let's Connect.
