If you caught one of the free concerts at the Boardwalk at Town Center this summer, blanket on the grass, a food truck line running long before the opening act finished, you also spent that evening looking across Medlock Bridge Road at a construction fence. That fence has wrapped the Medley site since the project broke ground in January 2025. It is still there as of this writing. By late October, it will not be.
That gap between the two sides of the road is the actual story of Johns Creek's Town Center right now, more than any single restaurant opening or ribbon cutting. One half of this 192-acre district has been open, programmed, and drawing crowds since May. The other half has been a construction zone the entire time. Understanding why the city built it in that order, and what changes when the two halves finally connect, tells you more about how to use this part of town than any list of new restaurants would.
The Park Side Opened In May, And It Has Been Busy Since
The Boardwalk at Town Center, the 20-acre park behind City Hall, had its official grand opening on May 8, 2026, with a ribbon cutting followed by a free concert from Boy Band Review and an opening set from Music Authority's Eclipse, a past winner of the city's own Battle of the Bands. Since then it has settled into a real rhythm: a summer concert series that continued through July, and an Independence Day event that drew ten separate food trucks, among them Auggie's Lucky Tacos, Bento Bus, A Little Nauti Gekko Hibachi Grill, Big House BBQ, and King of Pops, capped off with a fireworks display.
The park itself is not small. It centers on a 15-foot-wide elevated trail that runs roughly a mile from Johns Creek Parkway north to McGinnis Ferry Road, with a shorter half-mile loop around the north pond directly behind City Hall. A three-acre constructed wetland runs alongside the walking path, built specifically to manage stormwater and filter runoff, and it has already drawn wildlife that would surprise anyone who still pictures this stretch of Medlock Bridge Road as office parks and surface parking. City officials involved in the project have talked about egrets, frogs, and deer already using the wetland, which is an unusual thing to say about a $39 million public works project.
The amphitheater is built with a deck extending out over the water, and there is terraced seating built into the slope facing it, so the concerts happening there now have real staging rather than a folding platform on a lawn. The park is open from 6 a.m. to midnight, and public parking is available at City Hall, 11360 Lakefield Drive, with pedestrian access from the path just left of the building's front entrance.
Johns Creek's communications director put the ambition behind the project plainly when construction was still underway, telling Appen Media that no other city in the area was "building anything like this right there in their downtown." Whether or not that claim holds up against every suburb in metro Atlanta, the park itself is no longer a rendering. It is a place people are already showing up to on a Tuesday night.
Across The Road, Everything Is Still Behind A Fence
Medley is the other half of this equation, and it has not opened yet. The 43-acre, $560 million mixed-use project from Toro Development Company sits directly across Medlock Bridge Road from the Boardwalk, and its grand opening is set for October 29, 2026. When it opens, it brings roughly 200,000 square feet of retail and dining, 900 residences, office space, and a 25,000-square-foot central plaza that the developer says is designed to host more than 200 events a year on its own.
The tenant list, released in pieces over the past two years, gives a clearer picture of what actually opens on day one than the square footage does. Confirmed names include:
- STIR, a cocktail bar and scratch kitchen from Chattanooga making its first Georgia location, plus its standalone walk-up concept next door, Tonic House
- The Nest Cafe, the Alpharetta breakfast-and-lunch spot opening its first-ever expansion location
- 26 Thai Kitchen and Bar, an Atlanta-based concept
- Fadó Irish Pub and Little Rey, the taqueria concept from Atlanta chef Ford Fry
- Five Daughters Bakery, Drybar, Warby Parker, and home decor brand 13 Hub Lane
- A Trader Joe's, confirmed for the site in February 2026
That is a meaningfully different mix than what currently exists along State Bridge Road or in the older shopping centers nearby. It is also worth noting what is not retail at all. Boehringer Ingelheim, the animal health company, is taking more than 70,000 square feet of Medley's office space as its new U.S. headquarters, bringing close to 500 employees on site. That sits alongside Boston Scientific's life sciences research facility, which opened next door in 2025 and reinforced Johns Creek's pitch as a life sciences employment hub rather than just a bedroom suburb.
None of that is visible yet if you drive past today. As of this summer, the site is still under construction, though as of January 2026 the retail and dining space was already reported at more than 75 percent leased, according to reporting from The Creek.
The Road Between Them Is The Actual Obstacle
Here is the part that gets skipped in most coverage of the Town Center project: the Boardwalk and Medley are not one continuous space right now. They are separated by Medlock Bridge Road, also known as State Route 141, a road built for cars moving at speed, not pedestrians crossing on foot. Anyone who has parked at City Hall for a concert and then wanted to walk over for a bite at one of the existing restaurants on the Medley side already knows this. You do not walk it. You drive around.
The city has been working on a fix for almost two years. A pedestrian tunnel under Medlock Bridge Road broke ground in November 2024, designed as an arch culvert underpass connecting the park side to the retail side without anyone crossing the road at grade. As of this writing, the tunnel is still listed by the city as slated to open sometime this summer, alongside the last of the Boardwalk's remaining punch list items. It has not been confirmed open yet.
That tunnel is a small piece of infrastructure carrying a large amount of weight. Right now, using both halves of Town Center in one evening means parking twice. Once the tunnel opens, it means parking once, at either end, and walking the rest.
Why The City Built The Free Side First
There is a logic to the sequencing here that is worth naming, because it explains why the next two months matter more than they might seem to. The Boardwalk, a public park with free programming, opened first and has spent the summer training people to come to this specific intersection on a Tuesday, a Friday, a Fourth of July. Medley, the commercial side that depends on foot traffic to make its leases work, opens second, timed almost exactly for the point when the weather turns and the park's own concert season would otherwise wind down.
That is not an accident. A commercial developer opening 200,000 square feet of new retail and dining wants an audience that already has the habit of showing up. The city spent this first summer building that habit for free. October 29 is when the two things Johns Creek has been building separately, a public gathering space and a private dining and retail district, start operating as one place instead of two.
What This Actually Changes For The Rest Of 2026
If you already treat the Boardwalk as part of your weekly routine, the next few months are worth watching closely rather than waiting out. The tunnel opening, whenever it lands, is what turns a concert night into a concert-and-dinner night without moving your car. Medley's October 29 debut is when the restaurant options across that road roughly double overnight, from whatever exists there now to a lineup that includes an Irish pub, a Chattanooga cocktail bar, a Ford Fry taqueria, and a Thai kitchen, all within the same short walk.
Past that date, the Town Center's calendar keeps going rather than winding down for winter. The city's special events lineup carries into the holidays with things like the Holly Jolly Block Party, which marks the start of the North Fulton holiday season, so this stretch of Johns Creek is shaping up to have a longer active season than it has in years past, not a shorter one.
For a city that has spent two years as a construction zone next to a promise, that is the actual news. Not that a park opened, and not that a mixed-use project is coming. It is that the two are about to stop being separate errands.
Watching a neighborhood go through a change like this, from two disconnected work sites to one connected district, is exactly the kind of shift that tends to move how people think about a home's setting, even when nobody in the house is planning to sell. If you are curious what that kind of change means for property values near the Town Center, or you just want an honest read on where Johns Creek stands right now, Bondy Prestigious Properties is happy to talk it through. Schedule a consultation whenever you are ready.
