If you've walked the Stewart Creek Greenway from Wesley Heights toward Uptown, you've passed a low, single-story brick building that never seems to have anyone in it. It sits behind the mill's finished office building and the newer apartments, windows dark most evenings, loading doors usually shut. Everything else on the property filled in years ago. That one building didn't.
It has a name: the Weave building, a single-story structure inside the mill complex that dates to the same early-1900s construction as the rest of Savona Mill. After roughly a decade of uncertainty about whether the old textile mill would ever come back to life at all, the Weave building is now the specific piece that Atlanta developer Portman Holdings has plans for. It's getting a 30,000-square-foot food hall called Savona Food Works, expected to open sometime in 2027.
Everything Else Finished First
The rest of the 27-acre Savona Mill site has been quietly complete for a while. Portman converted roughly 200,000 square feet of the original mill into creative office space, with that phase substantially wrapped by 2023. The property's first residential phase, an apartment community called Vera at Savona Mill, opened with 319 units in 2024. A second residential phase is expected to break ground in 2027.
None of that gave neighbors much reason to walk onto the property itself. Office tenants come and go through their own entrance. Apartment residents have their own amenities. For anyone walking the greenway, the mill has mostly been something you pass, not somewhere you stop.
| Phase | What happened |
|---|---|
| A decade ago | Whether the mill would be redeveloped at all was genuinely uncertain |
| 2023 | Portman completes the first office phase, roughly 200,000 square feet |
| 2024 | Vera at Savona Mill apartments open with 319 units |
| May 2026 | Savona Food Works announced for the mill's Weave building |
| 2027 | Expected opening, though no exact date has been set |
What's Actually Confirmed for the Weave Building
Portman's announcement, along with reporting from Axios Charlotte and WBTV, lays out a specific mix for the space:
- About 25 food stalls
- A full-service restaurant and bar
- A coffee shop
- A flower market
- A rooftop bar
- Indoor-outdoor seating and event space
All of it is going into the single-story Weave building specifically, not the taller office structure or the apartment buildings. That's a meaningful distinction if you've been picturing the whole mill site somehow becoming a food hall. It's one building, built for a different kind of work over a century ago, now getting reused for a very specific one.
The Operator Charlotte Didn't Expect on the West Side
The person running Savona Food Works isn't a local chef testing a first concept. Robert Montwaid built Gansevoort Market in New York, then Chattahoochee Food Works and CTR Food Works in Atlanta, the latter inside the former CNN Center. He's also behind Vela Park Food Works, a micro food hall planned for East Lake Atlanta.
That track record matters for what kind of food hall this is likely to be. Montwaid's projects tend to function as destinations, not neighborhood lunch spots that happen to have a few stalls. In his own words about the project:
"An authentic and historic setting that people can enjoy throughout the day and into the evening."
His last three projects, for context
- Gansevoort Market, New York City
- Chattahoochee Food Works, Atlanta
- CTR Food Works, inside Atlanta's former CNN Center
A West Charlotte food hall run by someone with that resume is a different proposition than one more local pop-up market. It's a signal that Portman is betting the Weave building becomes a draw for people well beyond the immediate blocks around it.
The Neighbors Who've Waited a Decade
Travis Bell sits on the board of the Five Points Community Collaborative, a group representing the cluster of neighborhoods around the mill. He's watched this property sit in limbo for years. When Portman's plans became public, his reaction to a Channel 9 reporter was short.
"We've been waiting a long time."
Bell also described the food hall as the piece that could turn the mill into something people from across Charlotte come to see, not just a building that happens to sit near their houses. For anyone who has walked past the Weave building without a second thought, that's the context worth holding onto: the people closest to it have been watching this specific building for a decade, waiting to find out what it would become.
What Nobody Has Announced Yet
Here's what isn't confirmed. Neither Portman nor Montwaid has released a vendor list. Both Axios and WBTV reported that the specific businesses slated to fill the 25 stalls have not yet been named. So while the size, layout, and 2027 timeline are locked in, the actual restaurants, bakeries, and shops you'll find inside are still unknown. Anyone telling you a specific vendor is confirmed for Savona Food Works is ahead of what's actually been made public.
Where This Puts Wesley Heights on Charlotte's Food Hall Map
Once it opens, Savona Food Works will become Charlotte's sixth food hall, joining Optimist Hall, The Market at 7th Street, Urban District Market, Monarch Market, and Alley 51. Of those, Optimist Hall is the closest comparison, since it's also a converted early-20th-century textile mill, this one in the Optimist Park neighborhood on the other side of Uptown.
That comparison gives Wesley Heights residents a working reference point. If you've spent an afternoon at Optimist Hall, you already have a sense of what an old mill turned into a gathering space can feel like. Savona Food Works is aiming for that same transformation, on a smaller footprint, inside a building most of the neighborhood has walked past without a glance.
The Walk You Already Take
The Weave building sits directly off the Stewart Creek Greenway, the same stretch that connects Wesley Heights to Uptown and to the LYNX Blue Line. Construction is expected to start roughly six months after the May 2026 announcement, putting groundbreaking around the end of this year, with the food hall itself opening sometime in 2027.
None of that changes today's walk. But it does mean the building you currently pass without stopping is on a real timeline to become one you walk into. The mill finished building around the neighborhood two years ago. This is the first piece it's building for it.
If you're watching how this corner of Wesley Heights keeps evolving and want an informed read on what it means for the neighborhood beyond the headlines, the team at The Arches Charlotte keeps close tabs on the West Side's changes as they happen. Connect with our team anytime you want the fuller picture.