"I think it'll really boost sales and, you know, boost traffic throughout the area, restaurants, and retail shops." That's what Brass Bird owner Emily Anderson told WSOC-TV back when Pineville's social district officially opened on April 23, 2024, letting people carry a beer or a glass of wine while they strolled Main Street. She was right about her own block. What she wasn't talking about, because it didn't exist yet, is a second Pineville food scene that's now growing on Centrum Parkway, with its own timeline and its own reasons for being there.
On October 1, 2026, a Korean-Chinese noodle chain called Paik's Noodle opens its first restaurant anywhere in North Carolina at 10400 Centrum Parkway, inside the Centrum Shopping Plaza. Not its first in Charlotte. Its first in the state. A Mecklenburg County permit for the buildout was filed in June, and the opening was first reported by the Charlotte Observer's CharlotteFive team. A chain's statewide debut at a Pineville address is the kind of detail that tells you something is happening on Centrum Parkway that has nothing to do with what's happening on Main Street.
What Anderson's Prediction Actually Built
The Main Street social district runs from noon to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 to 10 p.m. on Sunday, seven days a week, letting patrons buy a drink from a participating business and carry it along a defined stretch of downtown. It was pitched to the town by Sarah Longstreet and modeled on what had already worked in places like NoDa and downtown Monroe. The idea was simple: give people a reason to park once and stay a while, instead of driving to Fort Mill or Waxhaw or Plaza Midwood for a night out.
Two and a half years in, the businesses that shaped that pitch are still the ones anchoring it. Anderson's Brass Bird sells USA-made goods alongside a wine bar. Slicers, run by Allen Jackson, doesn't serve alcohol itself but sits in the middle of the district and picks up foot traffic from the businesses that do. Longstreet herself pointed out that five years before the district launched, that same stretch of Main Street was lined with vacant storefronts, and Kit's Trackside Crafts owner Kit Burkholder called the social district a big step forward for pulling people toward Pineville instead of Fort Mill, Waxhaw, or NoDa for a night out. Waterbean Coffee and Carolina Scoops Ice Cream give the strip a daytime rhythm, The Garrison Cocktail Bar & Restaurant and Margaux's Wine Pizza & Market give it an evening one, and Middle James Brewing, a family-friendly, sports-focused taproom at 400 N. Polk Street that's been open since August 2019, gives it a place to watch a game with a kid in tow.
This is a slow-build scene. It's owner-operated, it's walkable, and it grew one storefront at a time starting from a stretch of empty windows. That's exactly the kind of growth a social district ordinance is designed to produce.
The Corridor Nobody Pitched to Anyone
Centrum Parkway didn't get an ordinance. It got a food hall and, now, a chain restaurant with no local backstory at all.
Super G Mart's food hall, which includes Alley 51, has already been drawing people to that stretch for international groceries and a rotating set of food stalls under one roof. Paik's Noodle joining that corridor isn't really a surprise once you see what else is already scattered around Pineville: Waldhorn Restaurant serves scratch-made German food and stocks more than 40 imported beers, Lula Banh Mi & Bakery covers Vietnamese street food, and Machu Picchu Peruvian Cuisine & Bar does ceviche. None of those are clustered on Main Street. They're spread across town, which means Pineville's appetite for food that isn't a burger and a beer predates Centrum Parkway by years. What Centrum Parkway is doing now is giving that appetite a single address instead of a scattered map.
The two corridors, side by side:
- Main Street (downtown, social district): Brass Bird, Waterbean Coffee, Carolina Scoops, The Garrison Cocktail Bar & Restaurant, Margaux's Wine Pizza & Market, Middle James Brewing
- Centrum Parkway: Super G Mart's food hall and Alley 51, and as of October 1, Paik's Noodle
Paik's Noodle itself traces back to 2006 in Seoul, under founder Chef Jong Won Paik, and describes its own menu as a Korean-Chinese fusion built around noodle dishes. Other locations of the chain, in Houston and Fresno, have run small menus of six or seven dishes, most priced under $10, with hours that lean toward quick lunch and dinner turns rather than a leisurely sit-down. Whether the Pineville location keeps those same hours or that same small-menu format hasn't been confirmed yet. What has been confirmed is the date and the address, and that's already enough to make Centrum Parkway a notable new stop for the chain.
The Same Week, Two Different Reasons to Go Downtown
October stacks both corridors' calendars on top of each other without them ever touching.
Paik's Noodle opens October 1 on Centrum Parkway. A week later, First Fridays returns to Main Street on October 9, running 5 to 9 p.m. with the small business pop-up market from HandCraftedMarket CLT, live music, food trucks, and the sip-and-stroll privileges of the social district in effect. The following weekend, October 15 through 17, Pineville Fall Fest takes over Jack D. Hughes Park at 513 Main Street, free to enter with a separate cost for rides, and run by Pineville Parks and Recreation with carnival rides, arts and crafts vendors, and live music through the evening.
None of that touches Centrum Parkway. There's no combined flyer, no joint promotion, no reason for either corridor to reference the other. A resident who wants a bowl of noodles on a Tuesday night and a resident who wants a beer on Main Street before First Fridays are solving two completely different errands, and this October both of those errands happen to have a firm date attached for the first time.
Why This Split Actually Works
It would be easy to read two separate food scenes as competition, one pulling attention from the other. That's not really what the numbers or the timeline suggest. The social district was built specifically to reward walking and lingering, which is a different transaction than picking up a quick bowl of noodles on the way home from Carolina Place Mall. Centrum Parkway isn't trying to be a second Main Street. It's building around convenience and variety in a shopping plaza format, which is its own kind of useful.
What's notable is that both are getting real investment in the same year. A downtown corridor that spent five years filling in vacant storefronts now has enough foot traffic that a wine bar owner can point to it by name. A strip a couple of miles away just landed a chain's first location in an entire state. Pineville isn't choosing between the two. It's running both at once, and the fact that a national debut and a downtown festival calendar can both land in the same October without any overlap says the town has enough going on to support two different kinds of nights out.
If you already live here, that's the practical takeaway. Main Street is still the place for a slow Friday, a First Friday market stroll, or a beer at Middle James while the game's on. Centrum Parkway is turning into the place you go when you want something you can't get a mile away, starting with a noodle shop opening in Pineville for its first North Carolina location.
If you're weighing what a town like this says about long-term value, that's a conversation Boykin Property Group has with clients around Pineville and the rest of the Charlotte-Fort Mill corridor every week. For now, Paik's Noodle opens October 1, First Fridays returns October 9, and Pineville Fall Fest runs October 15 through 17. Put all three on the same calendar and you'll see exactly how much this town has going on before the year's even over.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
