For years, an Oxford summer had one center of gravity: the Courthouse Square, with a short spillover to Jackson Avenue and Midtown. In the summer of 2026, that map is quietly redrawing itself. A cluster of openings out at Oxford Commons is pulling weekday errands and casual dinners east on Sisk Avenue, while the Square is responding by leaning into what a strip-mall pad site can't replicate. If you live here, your July routine is going to look different from your July 2024 routine, and it's worth knowing why.
The East Side Is Adding A Full Week's Worth Of Reasons To Drive Out There
The Oxford Eagle's March rundown of Oxford Commons is not a wish list. It is a construction schedule, and most of it lands between now and Labor Day.
Inside the Pearl development at Oxford Commons, three tenants are opening more or less simultaneously. Aplos is expected to open in June. Yoby, a yogurt and coffee shop, is expected to open in May or June, offering frozen yogurt, specialty coffee drinks and casual seating space. Legally Tan, also located within the Pearl development, is projected to open in June and will provide tanning and related beauty services. Aplós is not a Jackson import in name only. Also coming to The Commons will be Aplós Simple Mediterranean out of Jackson which will move into one of the new buildings. "We are thrilled to announce our third location in Oxford, a vibrant city that perfectly complements our vision at Aplós Simple Mediterranean," said Alex Eaton, owner.
The Terrace shopping center is filling in around them. Retail additions are also expanding at the Terrace shopping center. Baskin-Robbins will open next to the Oxford Commons Design Center and is expected to welcome customers this summer. Able Mabel will also open in the Terrace shopping center, next to 20/20 Lux Spa, in late summer. The new business, developed by the Newcomb family, will specialize in pre-made casseroles, cakes and pies. A weeknight rotisserie-and-casserole option a mile from Sullivan's is a specific kind of convenience Oxford has not had before.
Retail follows the food. Fran, a women's boutique and sister store to Jane on the Square, opened this past week. That detail matters. Jane has been a Square fixture. Its sister store choosing Oxford Commons is one of the clearest signals yet that Square merchants are treating the east side as a second front, not a competitor. H Squared is following the same instinct. Ole Miss alumna Haley Kelly is bringing her popular H Squared women's apparel store to Oxford. Kelly opened her first store in Cleveland 13 years ago. "It's always been my dream to open my second location in Oxford," Kelly said. Her timeline puts opening around the first week of August, in a new 3,300 square foot space. Magnolia Soaps, already an Oxford name, is moving over from its current location.
Then there is the anchor question. Sullivan's Grocery is a regional supermarket known for offering fresh produce, meat and seafood, bakery items and a full-service deli. The 35,000-square-foot store is expected to serve as a grocery anchor for the Summit area and surrounding neighborhoods. For residents on the east side of town, a 35,000 square foot grocery inside a five minute drive resets the calculus for how often anyone bothers with a Kroger run.
Around the grocery, the national chains are queuing up. Dutch Bros is expected to break ground in the spring. The drive-thru coffee chain will be located next to Chipotle Mexican Grill on Sisk Avenue. The next lot over on Sisk Avenue will be home to Whataburger, which is expected to break ground in early summer. The Texas-based burger chain is widely recognized for its made-to-order burgers, signature orange-and-white striped branding and 24-hour service at many locations. A McDonald's is planned for the former daycare lot near Tractor Supply, with construction expected to begin this summer.
Read all of that together and a pattern emerges. Groceries, coffee, sit-down Mediterranean, a burger chain that runs 24 hours, an ice-cream shop, a boutique with Square lineage, and a casserole shop within one shopping district. That is the shape of an everyday-errand hub, not an outlying strip.
The Square Is Not Losing, It Is Specializing
The temptation is to read east-side growth as a threat to the Square. The evidence from the Square itself argues the opposite. What is opening and thriving downtown skews toward things that cannot exist in a suburban pad site.
Start with the anchors that pull people in for a purpose. Opened in 1839, Neilson's is the South's oldest department store offering the finest in family apparel and housewares. On the square since 1979, Square books has book signings, book readings, and has available every book in print by William Faulkner. The radio show Thacker Mountain is recorded here in the spring and fall. Square Books is running the kind of author schedule that would be a headline event anywhere else and is a Wednesday night in Oxford. A recent example: a ticketed reading and signing with Jesmyn Ward for On Witness and Respair at Off Square Books at 129 Courthouse Square, with the ticket price folding in a signed first edition. That is a bookstore functioning as a small literary venue.
The food story on the Square is even more clearly about depth. Country Roads Magazine's February piece counted four MICHELIN-Guide recommended restaurants helmed by chefs with big personalities and sterling reputations in town. Their names are worth keeping straight because they anchor different corners of Oxford's evening. City Grocery, the brainchild of James Beard Award-winning chef John Currence, delivers one of Mississippi's most renowned takes on elevated Southern cuisine. , which Currence co-founded with fellow James Beard Award-winner, Vishwesh Bhatt, radiates a neighborhood Southern brasserie vibe, and prioritizes local ingredients, shareable small plates, and beautifully presented salads, sandwiches, and daily specials. Anchoring the top of Courthouse Square, Ajax Diner has remained famous for serving hearty portions of Mississippi's finest comfort food since 1997.
The lighter side of Square dining is holding its ground too. Back in Oxford proper, you might check out Saint Leo, a 2017 James Beard Foundation "Best New Restaurant" semifinalist that specializes in wood-fired Italian cuisine; or SoLa, helmed by Chef Erika Lipe, the 2024 Queen of Mississippi Seafood. Add Tarasque Cucina for pasta with French-Italian technique, Good Day Café for Joseph Stinchcomb's brunch, and Bouré for New Orleans lean, and the Square's dining calendar is essentially a rotation of chef-driven rooms. The Oliver Hotel now houses Kingswood as its in-house restaurant. Bottletree Bakery, Heartbreak Coffee, Oxford Creamery, and Donut Distillery cover the coffee-and-sugar side of a weekday walk. Tico's Steak House, on the Square since a February 2024 expansion from its longtime Mississippi home base, added a steakhouse where the Square had been missing one.
Newer arrivals off the Square are picking off niches too. Lamar Taco Shop brings color, creativity, and bold flavor to Oxford's dining scene. Just down North Lamar, this fresh and funky taco spot offers more than just great food. Their eye-catching atmosphere features a teal VW van turned bar as the centerpiece, adding a playful retro vibe to your dining experience. On Jackson Avenue, Homebody has opened with a home-goods and women's apparel mix, and a southern staple has arrived in Oxford just off the Square on Jackson Avenue east. The Pants Store is your new go-to for everyday fashion, footwear, and accessories. They offer men's, women's, and children's clothing and accessories.
None of those additions look like they are chasing what Oxford Commons is building. They are doing what strip retail cannot: giving people a reason to park once and walk.
The Practical Reason Your Routine Is Shifting: The Roads
There is a less glamorous force pushing the same direction. Anyone who has tried to cross town this summer already knows. The City of Oxford's own alerts page lists a string of overlapping street projects:
- June 30, 2026 - Old Taylor Road Construction/Impact on Water Pressure
- June 24, 2026 - Road Closure : Anderson Road at Esplanade Ridge
- June 17, 2026 - Road Closure: Anderson Road at Bradley Cove
- June 3, 2026 - Street Closure: Tyler Avenue, Between South Lamar Blvd and South 14th Street, Due to Construction
- June 2/3, 2026 - Street Closure on South Lamar Blvd From University Avenue to Tyler Avenue Due to Crosswalk Construction
Anderson Road, South Lamar, and Tyler Avenue are the arteries that feed the Square from the south and west. When those get pinched at the same time as Old Taylor Road's water-pressure work, the path of least resistance for a Tuesday grocery run genuinely does bend east toward Sisk Avenue. That is not a marketing claim. That is a map and a construction calendar reinforcing each other.
What A July Week Actually Looks Like Now
Stitch it together and a resident's summer week has two distinct halves. The east-side half is the utility half: Sullivan's on the way home from work, a Yoby cup for the kids after a swim lesson, an Aplós dinner when nobody feels like cooking, a Fran or H Squared stop when you'd rather not fight the Saturday Square crowd. The Square half is the intentional half: a Wednesday reading at Off Square Books, dinner at Saint Leo or Snackbar afterward, brunch at Good Day Café on a weekend when out-of-town guests are in, a Bottletree pastry and a Heartbreak coffee on the way to a Thacker Mountain taping in the fall.
The Square is not being hollowed out. It is being edited. As the merely convenient functions migrate east, the reasons left to walk the Square are the ones that were always the strongest: the bookstore, the chef-driven rooms, the department store that has been open since before the Civil War, the courthouse itself. Oxford Commons is not replacing that. It is absorbing the errands that were always a slightly awkward fit for a walkable historic block.
If you have lived here more than a few years, the sensation is familiar. Oxford grows by adding a new layer without erasing the old one. The trick this summer is knowing which layer serves which errand, and not driving to the wrong side of town on a Wednesday afternoon when Anderson Road is closed at Bradley Cove.
If you're weighing where to plant roots as the town keeps expanding east while the Square deepens its character, our team spends every day watching how these shifts play out block by block. Pam Powers and the Powers Properties group can help you read Oxford's changing map the way a longtime local does. Contact a Greenwood Real Estate Expert to talk through what any of it means for your next move.
