Drive Oleander Drive on any given weekday and you're mostly passing through. Errands at the mall, a left turn toward College Road, brake lights stacking up near Independence Boulevard. It has never been a corridor built for lingering. But three separate decisions made on this same half-mile stretch over the past year and a half point to something the daily commute doesn't quite capture: the people who own buildings here are choosing, again and again, to build places worth stopping for instead of places you just drive past.
The clearest example sat empty for two years before anyone noticed what almost happened to it.
The Building That Almost Became a Gas Station
At 5400 Oleander Drive, the building that once housed Eddie Romanelli's and later the gastropub Hops Supply Co. sat vacant after Hops Supply closed in March 2023. According to the team that eventually bought it, the space was headed toward becoming a gas station before anyone else stepped in.
Grant Steadman, founder of Flying Machine Brewing Company, bought the building in April 2025 and looked at what was already there instead of tearing it down. The result, The Sounder, officially opened December 20, 2025, with a menu built around locally sourced oysters and seafood and a tagline, Eat. Drink. Coast., that sums up the whole idea.
Steadman kept the focus tight.
"We want to focus on fresh, elevated seafood, but make the experience approachable."
Executive chef Jason Burrows, a Maine native who has cooked in Wilmington kitchens since 2016, built the menu around North Carolina shrimp and house-made marigold pasta, along with a raw bar that draws on Salt Street Oyster Company, a one-acre farm near Topsail Beach that Steadman co-founded with a friend. The same farm supplies Flying Machine Oyster Bar in Wrightsville Beach, so if you've had oysters there, you've already tasted where this menu is headed.
None of that required a gas station. It required someone willing to bet that a sit-down restaurant would do better on this stretch of Oleander than a fuel pump, and nine months into being open, the bet looks like it's paying off.
The Mall That Kept Almost Becoming Something Else
A half mile down the road, Independence Mall has been almost-becoming something else for the better part of a decade.
The mall opened in 1979 with Belk, JCPenney, and Sears as anchors. Its loan went into default by 2014, with a foreclosure date still being reset as late as 2016, before Rouse Properties bought the property for $45 million in 2017 with a plan to convert it into an open-air center. Sears closed in 2018, and Five Below and Dick's Sporting Goods moved into the old Sears wing by October 2020. Rouse's rebrand never quite stuck. The mall kept its name and stayed mostly enclosed.
In August 2025, the mall changed hands again, and the new ownership group is now working through a redevelopment that would turn the fully enclosed space into an open-air retail street, anchored by a grocery store, with the existing mall corridor updated alongside it. That's a different pitch than the last one: not a demolition and rebuild, but a slower conversion of what's already there into something people might actually walk between stores in, rather than parking, entering one door, and leaving.
What that means for anyone who shops here regularly, right now:
- The current interior layout and most existing tenants are still operating as the redevelopment moves forward in phases
- A grocery anchor is part of the plan, which would be new for a property that has never had one
- The stated goal is an open-air streetscape, not a full demolition, so expect gradual changes rather than one dramatic reopening
If you've been wondering why parts of the mall look mid-renovation lately, that's the answer. It's the same instinct as the building down the road: someone decided the version people already know deserved another shot at being somewhere worth spending an afternoon, not just running in for one purchase.
Long Leaf Park Already Knew This
If you want to see what "worth stopping for" already looks like on this corridor, you don't have to wait for either of those projects to finish. Long Leaf Park, at 314 Pine Grove Drive, has been doing it for years.
The park carries its current name because New Hanover County commissioners voted in July 2020 to rename it from Hugh MacRae Park, citing the troubled history of its original namesake. The land itself dates to a 1925 donation, and the new name points instead to the mature longleaf pines that shade the walking trails.
Whatever you call it, the park works the way both the restaurant and the mall are now trying to. It has 1.55 miles of paved trails, a dog park split for large and small breeds, six picnic shelters with grills and water access, four tennis courts, four baseball fields, and the only equestrian ring in the county, which still hosts horse shows on the occasional Saturday. People don't pass through Long Leaf Park. They park, stay for an hour or two, and come back next weekend.
What This Adds Up To
None of these three things happened because of the others. Steadman didn't buy 5400 Oleander Drive because the mall was changing hands. The mall's new owners didn't time their purchase around a restaurant opening down the street. But look at all three together and the pattern is hard to miss: on a corridor built for pass-through traffic, the people making decisions about individual buildings keep landing on the same answer. Build something you'd choose to stop at.
For anyone who already lives in Midtown, that's worth knowing heading into fall. Dinner at The Sounder is a five-minute drive for a lot of this neighborhood, and the patio and event space Steadman's team is still building out means it's worth checking back even if you already went once. The mall is worth a slower look next time you're headed in for something specific, since the layout you remember is mid-change. And if you haven't walked Long Leaf Park's loop since the splash pad went in, the dog park gets considerably more crowded once the afternoons cool off, so early mornings are still your best bet for a quiet lap.
A corridor doesn't change all at once. It changes one building at a time, by people who had the option to build something forgettable and didn't.
If you're weighing a move within Midtown or curious what a home near this stretch of Oleander is actually worth right now, Happy Clark can walk you through it, whether that's a complimentary home valuation or a straightforward conversation about what's changing in this part of Wilmington. You can also browse more on the Midtown neighborhood page for a fuller picture of the area.
