If you've been holding your breath for the Hickory Food Hall to open inside the old First National Bank building, you can exhale. It's still not open. It also isn't the reason downtown feels different than it did a year ago.

That distinction matters if you live near Union Square. The food hall has become the project everyone mentions when they talk about downtown Hickory's future, the one landmark that's supposed to signal things are really happening. But while that single building sat mid-renovation, a handful of smaller places quietly opened their doors across three separate stretches of downtown. The food hall is the story people are watching. It isn't the story that's actually unfolding.

The bank vault everyone's watching

The Hickory Food Hall project has real bones behind it. It's going into the 23,000-square-foot former First National Bank building at the corner of First Avenue NW and Second Street NW, and the plan has always included something genuinely unusual: the old bank vaults are being converted into individual vendor spaces. It's the kind of detail that makes a building worth walking past just to see how it turned out.

The people behind it have deep local roots. Annie Lam and her husband Tony Vo are running the project, and Lam's mother, Lynn Nguyen, spent more than 20 years running Nagano Japanese Restaurant in Hickory before handing the reins to her family. Vo also owns Waterbean Coffee, which was the first vendor confirmed for the space.

Here's the part that matters if you're tracking timelines rather than renderings. The concept was first announced back in 2023, with an original target of early 2024. That date came and went. By late 2025, reporting on the project had shifted the language to "tentatively set to open this summer." We're now in the first week of August, well past that target, and there's still no opening date on the calendar. That's not a knock on the owners. Restoring a 1920s-era bank building for food service is genuinely slow work. But it does mean anyone treating the food hall's opening as the marker for when downtown "arrives" is going to be waiting a while longer.

What already opened while we waited

Here's what's easy to miss if the food hall is the only project on your radar: downtown Hickory didn't pause and wait for it. New spots have been opening in the meantime, and they're spread out enough that no single block tells the whole story.

Head to the OLLE Arts District and you'll find North Hickory Market, a new neighborhood restaurant that leans into the building's own history. The name is a nod to its former life as Hutto's Market and North Hickory Furniture, and the menu runs from house-made bagel sandwiches at breakfast to farm-to-table dinners, with a patio that welcomes dogs.

Back on Union Square, Notions has settled into its space with tapas, shared plates, and a cocktail list, open Tuesday through Sunday. Plant Based Boss relocated into a new spot on Second Avenue NW on May 24, 2025, putting it a short walk from Union Square as well. Springs Road picked up Dough Re Mi, a bagel bakery running nine standard bagels alongside seasonal rotations. And if you're in the mood for a beer and some live music, B Chord Live, a brewery, restaurant, and music venue, held its soft opening on January 25.

None of that reads like a single dramatic reveal. It reads like a downtown filling in gradually, block by block, while everyone's attention stayed fixed on one building. If you've only been checking Union Square for what's new, you've missed most of it.

The parts of downtown that don't wait on construction

Some of what makes summer in downtown Hickory worth paying attention to isn't tied to any renovation timeline at all. The Downtown Hickory Farmers Market runs at Union Square under the Sails, with an April through October schedule of Wednesdays 10am to 1pm and Saturdays 8am to 1pm. It's been there through every phase of the food hall's delays and will keep running long after it opens.

Downtown's free summer movie series has two dates left this year. Here's the full 2026 schedule, so you know what's already passed and what's still ahead:

Both remaining nights are on Union Square, and the Hickory Downtown Development Association's calendar has the details as they firm up.

Looking further out, the Fall Art Crawl is set for September 17 from 5 to 8pm, spread across downtown's walkable four-block core with more than 60 participating artists. The Western Piedmont Symphony's Side Show and Hickory Ballet & Performing Arts are both expected to perform at various spots along the route, which turns a normal Thursday evening into something closer to a block party.

The old bank vaults are being converted into individual vendor spaces, the kind of detail that makes a building worth walking past just to see how it turned out.

What this actually tells you about downtown right now

Put these pieces together and a different picture of downtown Hickory emerges than the one built around a single marquee opening. The food hall will matter when it opens. It'll add vendor stalls in a building that's sat vacant for years, and the bank vault concept alone is going to draw people who've never had a reason to walk that block. But treating it as the thing that determines whether downtown is "happening" misses that downtown has already been happening, in smaller doses, spread across the OLLE Arts District, Union Square, Second Avenue, and Springs Road.

If you live downtown, that means the useful habit isn't waiting for one big ribbon cutting. It's checking a few different corners every month or two, because the next new spot is just as likely to show up near a converted furniture building as it is on the square itself. The farmers market and the movie nights aren't waiting on anyone's construction schedule, and neither, it turns out, is most of downtown's new dining.

Whenever the food hall finally does open, it'll be one more stop added to a list that's already longer than most people realize. Given how this year has gone, that might be the safest bet to make about it.

If you're thinking about what a specific block or neighborhood in Hickory means for your own plans, whether that's a future move or just understanding what your street is worth right now, Cat McCrary knows this downtown corner by corner. Schedule a Free Consultation whenever you're ready to talk it through.