Walk down Washington Avenue this month and it looks like a neighborhood in the middle of a growth spurt. A new Irish pub just opened. A darts venue signed a lease. A fried chicken restaurant everyone thought was gone for good is coming back. The chef behind Billy Sushi and a co-owner of NOLO's Kitchen bought a building together. None of that reads like decline.
But look at the addresses, not the headlines, and a different story shows up. Every one of these deals is happening inside a space that already had a restaurant in it. Nobody is building new retail on Washington Avenue this year. They're inheriting it, and the people doing the inheriting all have one thing in common: none of them are new to running a business in this neighborhood.
The Space That Sat Dark For Two and a Half Years
Start with the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fourth Street. First Draft Tap Haus closed there in January 2024, and the storefront sat empty through most of 2024 and 2025, a prime location on one of the North Loop's busiest blocks that nobody could figure out how to fill. It finally found a tenant this year: Killen's Irish Pub, owned by Peter Killen, who spent 26 years in Minneapolis and ran Cara Irish Pubs, the group behind Kieran's Irish Pub and The Local, before striking out on his own.
Killen didn't do a light refresh. The pub imported barstools, chairs, tables, and stained glass from Ireland, and built a 130-seat room around a 30-seat horseshoe bar with a 50-seat patio angled south, timed for Twins games at the ballpark a few blocks away. It's the kind of buildout that only makes sense if you're planning to be there for a long time, and it's the kind of investment a first-time operator rarely has the capital or the confidence to make in a space that just sat vacant for two and a half years.
The food press has already found the menu. Killen's Dublin Spice Bag, a plate of popcorn chicken, sauteed onions and peppers, thick fries, and a Chinese spice blend with curry sauce for dunking, is getting written up as one of the more interesting bites in the neighborhood right now, alongside the standard fish and chips and a ham and cheese toastie.
Five Deals, One Pattern
Lay the current wave of North Loop turnover side by side and the pattern gets easier to see.
| Address | What Was There | What's Moving In | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 324 N 6th Ave | First Draft Tap Haus (closed Jan. 2024) | Killen's Irish Pub | Open |
| 729 N Washington Ave, Nordic Tower | North Loop Galley / Ono Hawaiian Plates | Flight Club (Social Darts) | Lease signed Dec. 2025; projected late 2026 |
| 730 N Washington Ave | Borough | Revival (fried chicken) | Confirmed reopening later this year, no date set |
| 800 Washington Ave N, TractorWorks annex | Vacant since Billy Tserenbat first toured it in 2018 | Unnamed concept from Billy Tserenbat and Marty Collins | Originally targeted for spring 2026; not open as of this month |
| 208 N 1st St | New address, not a prior restaurant space | Parcelle (second location) | Targeted for this summer |
Four of five are reoccupations of addresses that had already housed a restaurant. Only Parcelle, the California-inspired organic cafe expanding from its original Northeast Minneapolis spot to a second location less than a mile away, is filling genuinely fresh retail space, and even that move is a known brand extending its own footprint rather than an outsider testing the neighborhood cold.
Why the Empty Storefronts Took So Long
The TractorWorks annex is the clearest example of how long a good address can sit unclaimed here. Billy Tserenbat, who owns Billy Sushi, first toured the 10,000-square-foot space in 2018. He wanted it then, but a young family and his own restaurant kept him from taking it on alone, so it sat empty. It took until 2025, and a partnership with Marty Collins of NOLO's Kitchen, for the deal to finally close. The two hoped to open this spring. As of this month, the space still isn't serving anyone, which means it's been roughly eight years since Tserenbat first walked through the door and the concept still doesn't have a name attached to it publicly.
Tserenbat has been direct about what's driving the interest now that he's got the keys.
"Washington is so hot right now. Now it's becoming even hotter."
That's not marketing copy. That's an operator who waited the better part of a decade for a specific address, describing why he thinks the wait was worth it. The concept is explicitly modeled on two Minneapolis nightlife institutions that no longer exist, Chino Latino and Bellanotte, with a menu that mixes Asian, Latin, and American cooking and a plan for a bar, dining room, and private event spaces.
Compare that to 729 N Washington Ave, the former home of North Loop Galley and Ono Hawaiian Plates. By the time State of Play Hospitality announced in December 2025 that it had signed a lease there for its Flight Club concept, the space had already turned over. A national operator with ten existing U.S. locations, including Chicago, Denver, and Las Vegas, didn't need years to decide the address was worth taking. When the capital and the track record are already in place, the vacancy clock barely gets a chance to run.
Every Name On This List Has Already Run Something Here or Elsewhere
None of the five deals above involve a first-time restaurateur betting their savings on an untested concept in an unfamiliar market. Look at who's actually behind each one:
- Peter Killen ran Cara Irish Pubs, the group behind Kieran's and The Local, before opening his own place.
- Flight Club's operator, State of Play Hospitality, has ten existing U.S. locations and a repeatable playbook for opening them.
- Revival is a known Minneapolis brand reopening under new ownership, not a concept starting from zero.
- Billy Tserenbat already runs Billy Sushi. Marty Collins already co-owns NOLO's Kitchen.
- Parcelle already operates in Northeast Minneapolis and is extending a proven model a mile down the road.
For a neighborhood that likes to talk about itself as scrappy and independent, the current round of openings skews heavily toward operators who've already survived running something, either in the North Loop specifically or in a comparable market elsewhere. That's worth knowing if you live here and you're trying to guess which new spot will still be around in three years. The track record of the person signing the lease is doing more predictive work than the concept itself.
What to Actually Watch on Washington Avenue Right Now
If you're timing a visit, Killen's is already serving, so that Dublin Spice Bag is available tonight if you want it. Revival's return to the former Borough space is confirmed but doesn't have a hard open date yet, so that's one to watch for an announcement rather than something to plan around this month. Flight Club is aiming for late 2026. The Tserenbat and Collins concept was originally supposed to open this spring and still hasn't, and Parcelle's second location is targeting sometime this summer. In North Loop terms, a target date is a starting point for the conversation, not a promise.
What's actually useful to understand, though, isn't the calendar. It's that Washington Avenue's storefronts are basically fixed in number. When one of these good addresses opens up, whoever gets it is very likely someone the neighborhood has already seen succeed at something else. That's a different kind of confidence than watching a district add square footage. It's a district where the same handful of players keep trading the same handful of good corners, and the waitlist for those corners is measured in years, not months.
If you've been in the North Loop long enough to remember what used to be in these spaces, this year's wave probably feels less like discovery and more like recognition. That's not a bad thing. It just means the neighborhood you already know is getting reshuffled by people who know it too.
For more on what's happening across the neighborhoods we work in, or if you're ever curious what a home in this part of Minneapolis is actually worth, reach out to William Smitten any time. Let's Connect.
