Eight businesses are listed as coming soon, including bagels, tacos, frozen yogurt, virtual reality and a medical cannabis dispensary.
The dark box on the Eastside Trail between New Realm Brewing and Two Urban Licks has been dark since June 2026. Big windows, no light behind them, a door nobody walks through anymore.
It is not staying one thing.
Illuminarium Atlanta closed in June after roughly five years at 550 Somerset Terrace NE, leaving about 30,000 square feet inside Common Ground.
As of late September, Common Ground’s website lists eight businesses coming soon: Coffee Belt, Fit For A Cookie, Mar Y Masa Tacos, Olive’s Frozen Yogurt, Pavilion, Spread Bagelry, Zero Latency and Botanical Sciences.
Some will occupy portions of the former Illuminarium space. Others are going into adjoining storefronts around the development. Together, they represent a shift from one large destination to a collection of smaller businesses.
What changes for someone walking the trail
The walk past Common Ground is about to have more places to stop.
Spread Bagelry, a Philadelphia company that kettle-boils its bagels in honey water before baking them in wood-fired ovens, is taking part of the former Illuminarium space. Mar Y Masa is planned as a Beltline-facing taco restaurant, while Zero Latency is an immersive virtual-reality concept from Australia.
Botanical Sciences is planned behind Azara and across from Zero Latency, rather than inside the main Illuminarium box.
That distinction matters, but so does what the business actually is.
Botanical Sciences will not be a recreational cannabis store. Georgia has not legalized recreational marijuana. It operates a medical cannabis program for patients and caregivers registered with the Georgia Department of Public Health.
To purchase regulated products, a patient must have a qualifying condition certified by a Georgia physician and hold an active Medical Cannabis Patient Registry Card.
No active card, no legal purchase.
A trail full of people on a Saturday therefore does not automatically become the store’s customer base.
The opening dates remain soft
Olive’s Frozen Yogurt is targeting spring 2027. Spread Bagelry is expected next year. Botanical Sciences has not announced a timeline.
That is the distinction readers should carry through the entire list. A logo on a leasing page signals a deal or an intention. It does not guarantee an opening date.
Why this property keeps changing its answer
Common Ground was announced in 2017 as a restaurant-driven redevelopment of the former Western Electric property along the Eastside Trail. New Realm Brewing and Bazati were among its early anchors. Illuminarium arrived in 2021 and filled the largest available space with a single immersive attraction.
Azara opened in November 2025. Illuminarium closed the following June.
The next strategy spreads the property’s risk across more leases. Losing one 30,000-square-foot tenant darkened a major portion of the development at once. Smaller storefronts take longer to assemble and may open months apart, but the departure of one would not create the same hole.
That is why the coming-soon list matters less than the sequence of actual openings.
It is smart for Common Ground to be adding a variety of businesses amongst one of the busiest sides of The Beltline. The concern is around having rolling grand openings and how that will impact people's perspectives of the space. It will also be interesting to see if we will ever see mega attractions like Illuminarium again or is it just a attraction that always comes with an expiration date.
