If you live within walking distance of Bull Street south of Forsyth, you already know the block by muscle memory. The corner where you stop for coffee, the storefront where you keep meaning to try the pop-up, the stretch you cut through on the way to Two Tides. What is worth noticing this summer is not that Starland has more of everything. It is that two of the biggest anchors on the strip are quietly swapping personalities at the same time.
One is a retail departure filled by a decades-old Savannah name. The other is a restaurant that has been "coming soon" for so long that most locals stopped believing it. Both are on Bull Street. Together, they change the walk.
The 2400 Bull Swap
The mixed-use building at 2400 Bull, redeveloped between 2020 and 2022, has been the commercial anchor of the corridor since it opened. It currently houses Sola Salon, F45 Training, Brochu's Family Tradition and Garden Square as tenants, with the ground-floor corner unit doing most of the visual work for the block. For the last several years, that corner belonged to Lite Foot Company, the refill store where you brought your shampoo bottles back and picked up a clothing-swap flyer on your way out.
That corner is now Leopold's. In late June 2026, Leopold's Ice Cream filed to install a neon-illuminated wall sign at 2400 Bull St., taking the space left vacant after the Lite Foot Company closed. The Starland shop would become Leopold's fourth location, alongside scoops now served at the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport and on Whitemarsh Island.
Think about what that swap actually does to foot traffic. Lite Foot pulled a specific, planned trip. You came, you refilled, you left. Ice cream is a spontaneous trip. It pulls strollers off Bull Street on a Tuesday at 8 p.m. It gives the block a reason to stay lit after the shops close. The building keeps its salon, its gym, and Brochu's Family Tradition upstairs, but the corner tenant is now the one you walk toward without a plan.
What Fishbar Finally Being Open Actually Changes
One block south, the other shift landed after a much longer wait. Fishbar, brought to Starland by Southern Cross Hospitality, the group behind Collins Quarter and Fitzroy, was supposed to open around July 4 but hit ventilation problems during the buildout. The space is the former Squirrel's Pizza, right next to Water Witch and Ukiyo. As of this summer, it is open, and the reviews reading room has moved on from "when is it opening" to specific plates: roasted diver scallop, tuna tartare, the fennel and apple salad.
The interesting thing about Fishbar is not that Starland got another seafood spot. It is that Water Witch, Ukiyo, and Fishbar now form a three-door cluster under related ownership on one short face of Bull Street. Anthony Debreceny's team runs Ukiyo two doors down. That kind of density did not exist here a year ago. You can now start with a martini at Water Witch, walk twenty feet, and be seated for oysters without moving your car. The block behaves like a small dining district instead of a scattered set of individual bets.
The story of Starland this summer is not more openings. It is the block tightening. Two of the strongest visitor magnets on Bull Street, one sweet and one savory, are pulling within four hundred feet of each other.
The First Friday Spine
None of this replaces the actual public rhythm of the neighborhood, which remains First Fridays. First Fridays in Starland run every first Friday of the month from 5 to 9 p.m. The July and August dates this summer are already on the books:
- Friday, July 3. The Starland District opens the holiday weekend with First Fridays, with galleries, shops, studios, and local businesses hosting special events and extended hours. Because it lands on a Friday of a long weekend, expect the DeSoto Avenue stretch to run heavier than a typical First Friday.
- Friday, August 7. Confirmed 5 to 9 p.m., again anchored on DeSoto Ave.
If you have never done First Fridays as an intentional walk instead of a drift, the useful order is: start at ARTS Southeast at 2301 Bull for the gallery openings and open studios, then work south toward DeSoto Avenue for the outdoor makers, cross to Two Tides Brewing at the corner of DeSoto and W 41st, and finish inside Starland Yard when the food trucks are still running. Sulfur Studios and Superbloom sit inside that loop and are usually running receptions or pop-ups the same night. That five-stop walk covers three blocks and one hour if you are trying, two if you are not.
Between the Anchors
The First Friday walk is the public version of the neighborhood. What lives between Fridays is the version residents actually use, and that is where the summer's small updates matter most.
For a walk-up meal that is not a restaurant reservation, Brochu's Family Tradition remains the reliable answer inside 2400 Bull, and it is now sharing a wall with Leopold's, which is the kind of one-two you plan a Wednesday evening around. If you want a sit-down room, Lucia Pasta Bar in Starland has settled in with house-made pastas, wood-fired pizza, Negronis on draft, and menu items like squid ink bucatini. Late Air is the neighborhood wine bar option, with natural wines and small plates built around local ingredients. Both are within a five-minute walk of the Water Witch corner.
For the daytime version of the neighborhood, the Savannah African Art Museum at 201 E. 37th Street is still free and still one of the least-crowded ways to spend an hour in Starland on a hot afternoon. Front Porch Improv on W Victory Drive is running Friday Night Live through the summer if you want the block's after-dark option on a weekend that is not a First Friday.
The point of naming all of this is not to hand you a list. It is to show that the neighborhood has finally reached the density where you can build a full evening without leaving the fifteen-block core. Two years ago you had to drive out for the second stop. This summer, the second stop is next door.
A Quiet Note on the Neon
One footnote for anyone who lives on the surrounding blocks. Leopold's sign is not a foregone conclusion in the shape most people picture. Because 2400 Bull sits inside the Thomas Square Streetcar Historic District, the wall sign has to clear the Historic Preservation Commission, and the sign petition was scheduled to go before the Historic Preservation Commission in late June. That review process is why the Starland corner is still, for a few more weeks, a paper sign and a locked door. If you have opinions about a neon-lit corner on Bull Street after dark, this is the season those opinions actually matter. HPC meetings are public.
What the Block Looks Like by Labor Day
If you walk the Bull Street corridor from Forsyth south to Victory on the first weekend of September, the two most-photographed windows will not be the ones you would have named a year ago. They will be a warm pink neon glow at the corner of 2400 Bull and a fire-pit patio a block south. The rest of the neighborhood, the murals, the makers markets, the First Friday galleries, Starland Yard's food trucks, will look the way it looked in June. What changed is which corners the walk is organized around.
That is the version of Starland worth knowing this summer. Not a list of new places. A shorter walk between the ones that matter.
If you are curious how a summer like this one is reshaping value on the surrounding blocks, or you own on one of them and want a candid read on where your home sits inside that shift, Toria Wallace is glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
