If you live on Tennessee Avenue, you have probably noticed the last six months feel different than the six before them. Two of the neighborhood's most photographed storefronts went dark, a new operator took over the Incline base, and a Columbus ice cream brand you have seen at Whole Foods is about to have a scoop shop three blocks from your porch. The rest of St. Elmo, meanwhile, looks almost exactly like it did last spring. That contrast is the real story of 2026 here.
The short version: the churn is not spread across the neighborhood. It is concentrated in a two-block radius around the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway station, and it is happening because one company now controls almost everything at that corner.
The Incline base has a new landlord, in effect
For years, the ice cream shop, the ticket window, and the concession stand at the foot of the Incline felt like separate small pieces of a bigger walk. That is no longer true. CARTA signed a contract with the Reinert Group to operate businesses around the Railway and handle ticketing, after CARTA ended its agreement with Clumpies late last year. CARTA still owns the Incline Railway, but the Reinert Group oversees operations tied to the surrounding businesses and ticketing.
Here is what has moved through that corner in the last several months:
- February 28, 2026 — Clumpies Ice Cream Co. closed its location at the base of the Incline Railway. Its Frazier Avenue and Market Street shops remain open.
- March 4, 2026 — 1885 Grill announced the immediate closure of its flagship St. Elmo location a few blocks north.
- March 27, 2026 — SoHi Pizza & Mountain Top Bar held its grand opening at the Incline base.
- April 30, 2026 — Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams opened for public access with a soft opening, ahead of a May 21 grand opening in the former Clumpies space.
That is four significant transitions inside ninety days, all within a short walk of each other. The Reinert Group has said the goal is to create a destination that appeals to both visitors and locals, and the practical translation for residents is that the corner you walk past on your way to Guild Trailhead now has a coordinated operator making choices about what sits there.
What that changes for a Saturday morning
If you have been treating the Incline base as a tourist zone to avoid on weekends, the tenant mix is worth a second look. Jeni's, founded in 2002 by Jeni Britton in Columbus, operates nearly 100 scoop shops across 30 cities, and its pints are already sold locally at Publix, Whole Foods Market, and Target. A brand at that scale opening its first Chattanooga scoop shop at your neighborhood's most-photographed intersection is a different animal than a rotating cast of tourist-facing kiosks. It will pull weekend foot traffic that used to drive past St. Elmo on the way somewhere else.
SoHi Pizza & Mountain Top Bar is the other half of that pull. It is not a to-go window. A bar at the Incline station means the evening use of that corner extends past the last car of the day, which is a shift from how the block has operated for most of the last decade.
The 1885 Grill closure is a separate story
Do not lump the 1885 Grill closure in with the Incline turnover. It happened for different reasons and it left a different kind of hole.
The owners were direct about why. They cited ongoing major building maintenance needs, continued operation without a city- and state-mandated in-ground grease trap, and significant changes to parking costs controlled by the property's landlords. Ownership offered to purchase the building to complete the necessary improvements, and when that offer was declined, additional proposals to personally fund the required upgrades were also denied. The company still operates in Ooltewah and is opening a new 1885 Grill in Chickamauga, Georgia in late spring.
What you are left with on that block of St. Elmo Avenue is a physical building with the same underlying issues the last operator walked away from. A grease trap requirement is not a small line item, and the parking economics that pushed 1885 out do not disappear because the tenant changed. It is a useful thing to know when the "coming soon" paper eventually goes up in that window.
What hasn't moved, and probably won't
The other reason to pay attention to the Incline block is that almost nothing else in St. Elmo has changed. The Tennessee Avenue commercial strip is still anchored by the same set of independent operators it had a year ago:
- Little Coyote — Erik and Amanda Niel opened Little Coyote in historic St. Elmo in 2023, with a menu built around smoked meats, tacos, house-made tortillas, and agave-forward cocktails. Erik is also chef and co-owner of Easy Bistro & Bar and Main Street Meats, and a two-time James Beard Award nominee for Best Chef Southeast.
- The Hummus Bowl — sits close to the Incline base with a small Mediterranean menu built around falafel, gyro plates, and build-your-own wraps.
- Purple Daisy Picnic Cafe — the long-running St. Elmo Avenue spot that still handles a large share of the neighborhood's catering and picnic orders.
- Common Table, The FEED Co Table & Tavern, Han-Mi, Mr T's Pizza & Ice Cream, and Urban Stack round out the working set of restaurants residents actually cycle through week to week, per Yelp's July 2026 ranking of restaurants near St. Elmo Avenue.
If you have been in the neighborhood for even a year, none of those names surprise you. That is the point. The narrative that St. Elmo is "changing fast" is really a narrative about two blocks. The rest of Tennessee Avenue is holding.
The parts of the neighborhood no one is rewriting
The Incline story is loud, and it is easy to miss that the everyday infrastructure residents actually use has been quietly steady.
The Riverwalk connects the Blue Goose Hollow Trailhead to St. Elmo, and several trailheads, including St. Elmo and Glen Falls, connect the neighborhood to Lookout Mountain, which spans more than 90 miles across three states. The Guild Trailhead at the base of Lookout Mountain remains the easiest walk-from-home entry point for the shaded, former-rail-bed path that a lot of residents use as their default weekend loop.
Ben Miller Park has the dog park, playground, and tennis courts, and St. Elmo Boulders at Old Wauhatchie Park handles the bouldering and walking-trail crowd. The nearby South Chattanooga Community Center offers pickleball courts, a swimming pool, and seasonal classes. The Virginia Avenue Greenway runs from the Riverwalk Greenway to 55th Street, which is the connector most out-of-town guests do not know exists.
The neighborhood's calendar is also unchanged in its bones. St. Elmo maintains a strong sense of community through local events, including the Hello, St. Elmo! Street Festival and Corgi Parade, the annual St. Elmo's Feast Day, and neighborhood initiatives like the Spring Clean. The neighborhood's historic designation shapes daily life, since most renovation work aside from painting and landscaping must be cleared with the city, and the only neighborhood oversight group is the Community Association of Historic St. Elmo, which requires no dues or fees.
The takeaway for people who already live here
Two things are worth carrying with you the next time someone asks what is happening in St. Elmo. First, the block around the Incline is being rebuilt as a single coordinated project, and the tenant list is going to keep shifting until the Reinert Group settles on a mix that works for both a Tuesday-morning walk and a Saturday-afternoon rush. Second, the 1885 Grill building is a real-estate problem, not a demand problem, and whatever eventually opens there will inherit the same grease-trap and parking math the last tenant could not solve.
Everything else, the trailheads, the Feast Day, the Purple Daisy line at lunch, is the same neighborhood you already know.
If you are thinking about how these shifts might affect the value of your home, or you are simply curious what a St. Elmo house is currently worth in a market this uneven, South Luxe Homes is happy to talk. Request your free home valuation any time.
