What's New Around Fisher Park This Summer: Openings, Weeknight Dinners, and Park Days

Walk out the north end of Fisher Park at dusk, cross Bessemer, and keep going. The block of Battleground Avenue between the park and Cornwallis has been the neighborhood's quiet back door for years, more pass-through than destination. That is changing this summer. A long-empty auto shop is turning into a butcher-bar and provisions market. An ice cream and dirty soda shop is moving in next door. Reservations at the block's James Beard–nominated small-plates room are still hard to get on a Saturday. For people who already live here, the practical geography of a Tuesday night is shifting a few blocks west.

The neighborhood's center of gravity is moving to Battleground

Fisher Park has always been read from Elm Street. The park entrance, the historic homes, the address every guidebook lists all sit on that side. The daily-life map is different. If you live between Church and Battleground, your fastest walking radius for a drink, a weeknight dinner, and a bag of groceries for tomorrow now lands almost entirely on the Battleground side. That is a new sentence to be able to write about Fisher Park.

The clearest signal is what Taylor and Jordan Armstrong are building at 1013 Battleground. They took what the developers describe as a long-vacant auto shop and are turning it into a butcher shop, restaurant, and provisions market meant to be walked to, not driven to. The site literally frames its own pitch as an answer to "What are we doing tonight?"

"Bike in from the Greenway, walk from Westerwood or pull in on your way home from work."

That is not a phrase you use unless the neighbors are the target customer.

What's actually opening at 1013 Battleground

Battleground Butcher Bar is targeting a late-summer 2026 opening in a 4,000-square-foot building on the former Ready Auto and Ready Gas & Convenience property. Reporting from the Triad Business Journal put the seat count at 40 to 50 inside with another 30 to 40 on the patio, and construction adviser William Womack of Burgess Built confirmed the late-summer timeline. Taylor Armstrong came out of the kitchen at Kau, where he worked as a butcher and back-of-house manager, which is worth knowing when you read the menu concept: high-quality cuts, house-made sausage and bacon, pre-seasoned proteins built to finish at home, plus a full bar and a short rotating list of entrées.

The second half of the property matters just as much for how residents will actually use it. Emily Baker and Chase Strange, who run The Daily Grind coffee shop in Burlington, are bringing Float Dirty Soda and Ice Cream to the same site later in 2026. One address, two businesses, one walk from most of Fisher Park's east-side blocks. That is a different kind of amenity than a standalone restaurant, and it is the piece that will change weekend routines with kids more than any single dinner spot.

The weeknight map, redrawn

If you already live here, the useful question is not "is there somewhere new to eat" but "what does each room actually do." Fisher Park's cluster is small enough that every place has a distinct job.

MACHETE has been the neighborhood's marquee kitchen for a while, and its accolades keep piling up: a Wine Enthusiast Top 50 Wine Restaurant nod, a James Beard nomination, a spot on Yelp's Top 100 Places to Eat in 2022. The menu is Southern roots run through global influences, delivered as small plates meant to be shared across the table. What has quietly become true is that the room is now one of four Battleground-block reasons to leave the house, not the only one. Parking on this stretch is genuinely tight, so the walk-in radius is doing real work.

Fisher's Grille sits in the historic district on the Elm side and stays anchored to the older neighborhood rhythm. Live blues on Tuesdays is the reason to remember it exists on a slow week.

The park hasn't moved

None of this changes the reason people wanted to live in Fisher Park in the first place. The 12 acres at 700 N. Elm still hold a stream through woods, 1.2 miles of natural walking trails, and a playground on the east side with a sandbox, swings, and a climbing area. Restrooms are a short walk over at Lake Daniel, Latham, or Lindley Park.

What is less visible from a listing photo is the neighborhood's own calendar. The Fisher Park Neighborhood Association runs an Easter Egg Hunt in the east-side playground each spring, a Summer Kick Off in late May with live music (this year it was Rocking Soul Revival at 406 West Bessemer), National Night Out Against Crime in the summer, and an early-December Luminaria night with a city-permitted bonfire, s'mores, and Santa in the King's Chair. The chair itself has a story. Master stone-mason Andrew Leopold Schlosser, who likely crafted many of the park's granite bridges from Mount Airy stone, made the hand-carved King's Chair, and his descendants donated it to the park in 2013. It is now the standard wedding-photo backdrop and the seat Santa uses in December.

That mix of infrastructure and tradition is the thing a new resident cannot fully see for the first year. It is also why the Battleground shift matters. The park runs on volunteer labor and neighbor-organized events; the new commercial energy a block west gives those events a natural after-party that used to require a drive.

A weekend, sketched

For anyone reading this while planning a stretch of days at home, here is one way the pieces fit together without leaving the neighborhood on foot.

1. Friday, 6 p.m. Drink and a plate at Battleground Butcher Bar once it opens, then pick up meat and a side for Saturday dinner before you walk home. If it's still pre-opening, MACHETE at 5 p.m. on the dot is the only way to get a Friday table without a reservation.
2. Saturday, 9 a.m. The 1.2-mile trail loop through the park, then the Latham Park Greenway spur if you want to stretch it. Coffee back on Elm.
3. Saturday, 4 p.m. Playground on the east side of the park, then Float for dirty sodas and ice cream on the way home when it opens later this year.
4. Saturday, 8 p.m. MACHETE for the long dinner. Two-hour cap on parties of six or fewer, so build the evening around it rather than after it.
5. Sunday. Slow. The park bench near the King's Chair, then Tuesday-blues at Fisher's Grille penciled in for the week ahead.

The point of the sketch is not the itinerary. It is that the itinerary is walkable now in a way it was not a year ago.

If you're thinking about your own move within the neighborhood

Most of the phone calls I take about Fisher Park are from people who already live within a mile and are trying to decide whether to right-size into a smaller historic home closer to the park or stretch into something with more yard on the Battleground side. Those are two very different housing conversations, and the answer usually comes down to how you actually spend a Tuesday night, not what the listing photos show. If you want to talk through what the shift on Battleground means for your block specifically, or how it might read to a future buyer, Emma Skelton is glad to walk it with you.