The white chapel at Spring and 10th is the building everybody on that block can picture. Columns, portico, sitting up on the rise like it was placed there to be looked at. Margaret Mitchell's, the author of Gone With The Wind, funeral was held inside it.
It has been closed since 2020, and it is still closed.
What opened on that block instead was an Indian restaurant at street level a few steps away.
What is actually opening
Pataaka, a modern small plates Indian restaurant from Atlanta based chef Anish Nair, opened August 22 at 1020 Spring St NW, at the base of Spring Quarter. Lunch and dinner both, from day one, with menus planned around regional Indian recipes. Reservations run through OpenTable.
Nair is not new here. He owns Jai Ho Indian Kitchen at Krog Street Market, and before that he ran a full service Jai Ho on Dutch Valley Road in Morningside, which he closed during the height of the pandemic. That space is Verdure Kitchen & Cocktails now.
"I've dreamed of opening this restaurant for a decade and can't wait to finally share an experience with our guests," Nair, the executive chef and partner, said of the opening.
A decade of wanting it, and about a year of waiting on the block. When Pataaka was announced in May 2025, it was expected to open later that year.
Why the date slipping is the story, not a complaint
If you live in Midtown or work on this side of it, the practical read is simple. As of August 22 you have another lunch option on Spring Street that is not a lobby cafe, and a dinner room with a patio and a private mezzanine you can book for a group. That is a real change to a block that has spent six years as a construction site.
The larger thing it tells you is about pacing. Spring Quarter is filling in, and it is filling in one rescheduled date at a time.
Celestia, a cocktail bar and lounge, and ISHIN, the omakase counter next to it, both from chef Fuyuhiko Ito, opened the week of October 14, 2025 on the 8th floor of the Ten Twenty Spring office tower. Habaneros, the first Georgia location for Habs Hospitality Group, was announced by Portman on June 23, 2026 to open the following week on the ground floor of Sora, the 370 unit residential tower. Sozou has been promised for the block since summer 2025, then early 2026.
So the lineup on paper is five restaurants. The lineup you can actually walk into has been arriving in pieces, on dates that move.
The building everyone recognizes is the one still empty
The Patterson House was designed by Philip T. Shutze and built in 1928, and most people know it as the home of the H.M. Patterson & Son Spring Hill Chapel. The city granted the mortuary landmark status in August 2018 after a push from the Atlanta Urban Design Commission.
Portman Holdings bought the four acres in December 2019, the chapel plus two adjacent gardens. The funeral home closed in January 2020, and the new owner said then that it might reopen as an entertainment and food space. A Portman spokeswoman said the company intended to preserve the chapel, and it did.
In December 2023, Portman announced that Steve Palmer of The Indigo Road Hospitality Group would take the full 24,000 square foot Patterson House as a morning to night destination. The concept was never detailed. By the May 2025 press release announcing Pataaka, Palmer and Indigo Road were no longer listed on the website and were not mentioned at all.
This month, Portman named the next one: Hal's The Steakhouse, opening inside the Patterson House in 2027, with owner Sammy Jimenez adding a European inspired cafe serving coffee, pastries and simple breakfast, plus a fine art gallery on the second floor.
Six years, two named operators, and a promise made in 2020 that the chapel would become a place you could eat.
The office tower next to it was delivered in December 2024. The 1928 chapel is the construction project.
I would go eat at Pataaka because a chef who waited ten years for a room tends to show up for it, and because the only date on this block that has ever been worth anything is the one where a door actually opens. What I am not doing is treating 2027 as a fact. Put Hal's on your calendar in pencil, watch whether Sozou ever turns on a light after two announced windows, and judge Spring Quarter by what you can order there, not by what has been announced for it.
