Walk Centre Avenue past Highland this month and you will pass a storefront with wall-length palm murals glowing through the glass, in a space that used to say Plum Pan Asian Kitchen. That is Palm Palm, which opened on July 6 with no advance renderings, no groundbreaking ceremony, no press tour. One day the space was Plum Pan. A few weeks later it was Palm Palm, serving sushi tots and Wagyu steaks under a Palm Springs theme dreamed up by Herky and Lisa Pollock with chef Ed Smith.
Three blocks away, at Shady and Penn, on the line where East Liberty meets Shadyside, a different kind of opening has been unfolding since late 2025, and it is still unfolding. The Meridian, a five-acre retail and residential complex, has been rolling out tenants on a public schedule for over a year, and residents who have been reading every press release about it could be forgiven for thinking that corner is where East Liberty's food and retail scene actually lives. It is not, at least not yet. The neighborhood's two biggest development stories this year are running on completely different clocks, and understanding which one is which tells you a lot about how to actually use this neighborhood right now.
The Corner Everyone Keeps Reading About
The Meridian was originally supposed to have most of its tenants open by late summer 2025, according to reporting from mid-2024 when construction was underway. That target came and went. The first tenant, a 36,000 square foot Market District by Giant Eagle, didn't open until November 2025. Barnes & Noble followed with a grand opening on November 19, with CEO James Daunt telling reporters that residents still remembered the old Borders in East Liberty and had petitioned the company to come back. By the time Shake Shack opened its doors on December 4, donating a dollar per sandwich sold that day to 412 Food Rescue, only two other Meridian tenants had gone before it.
Cava was next in line, announced in mid-January 2026 as the fourth confirmed tenant and set to open at 151 Shady Avenue with a staff of 25 to 40 and a donation match benefiting the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. Even counting Cava, that is four tenants roughly a year past the original late summer 2025 target for most of the complex.
That same January report listed five more storefronts, including Sephora, Sushi Atarashi, Wushiland Boba, J. Crew Factory, and Meridian Nail Bar, as still pending for later in the year. Whether all five have opened their doors by the time you read this is worth checking for yourself next time you're on Shady Avenue. The apartments above the retail, a 231-unit building called Ophelia, were slated for early 2026 occupancy.
None of this makes the Meridian a bad addition. A Market District, a full-size bookstore, and a Shake Shack within walking distance of the busway is a real upgrade for daily errands. But the pace of delivery has been slower than the pace of press coverage, and that gap matters if you're the kind of resident who plans a Friday night around what you read was "coming soon."
Three Blocks Over, Nobody Sent a Press Release
While the Meridian has been staffing up one storefront at a time, Centre Avenue and Highland Avenue have quietly filled in around it, business by business, with none of the fanfare.
- Palm Palm, 5996 Centre Avenue, opened July 6 in the former Plum Pan Asian Kitchen space with a coastal, Palm Springs-inspired menu from Herky and Lisa Pollock and chef Ed Smith.
- Title 9, 5997 Centre Avenue, opened in February as Pittsburgh's first dedicated women's sports bar, just one door down from where Palm Palm would land months later.
- Margaux, at the corner of Highland and Penn, opened as a European-style café and cocktail bar with a rotating wine and beer list and a happy hour running Tuesday through Friday.
- BéLa Kitchen, on Whitfield Street, is chef Minh Luong's second concept after more than a decade running Tan Lac Vien, built around regional Vietnamese dishes that rarely make it onto American menus, including bò né, a sizzling beef and egg breakfast served in a cast-iron skillet.
- Kyuramen, in East Liberty, marked this ramen chain's first Pittsburgh location.
- Fish Nor Fowl, 5523 Penn Avenue on the East Liberty and Garfield line, brought Richard DeShantz's pasta-forward Italian menu to a corridor that already had plenty of competition for attention.
Every one of these opened inside an existing storefront, on a timeline set by the operator rather than a developer's construction schedule. Palm Palm and Title 9 sit at 5996 and 5997 Centre Avenue, essentially next to each other, and opened five months apart without either one waiting on the other, or on anything happening at Shady and Penn.
What This Actually Tells You
If you are timing an evening out around whatever East Liberty coverage told you was opening next, you have probably been checking the wrong corner. The Meridian generates more headlines because it is one project with one developer and one press contact. Every tenant announcement is a story. But four confirmed openings in fourteen-plus months is a slower clock than six independent businesses opening across roughly the same stretch of Centre and Highland with zero advance notice.
This isn't a knock on the Meridian. Big anchor projects take longer because they involve construction schedules, lease negotiations, and build-outs that a single restaurant swapping into an existing kitchen doesn't have to deal with. Walnut Capital's separate expansion of Bakery Square, a six-story building at Penn and Shady approved by the city planning commission in July with 199 units, shows that the corporate development pipeline in this part of East Liberty isn't slowing down either. It's just slower than it looks from a headline.
If you actually live here, the practical takeaway is simple: the neighborhood's day-to-day food and drink scene right now is centered on Centre and Highland, not on the corner getting the press coverage. That's where you'll find a full night out already up and running, from a sports bar to a Palm Springs-themed dinner spot to a French-inspired coffee bar a few blocks north.
And underneath both clocks, one institution just keeps running regardless of what opens or doesn't. The Farmers' Market Cooperative of East Liberty has operated every Saturday from 5 a.m. to noon since 1941, making it the oldest continuously running market in western Pennsylvania and one of the only places in the city to get fresh, locally raised meat and produce through the winter months. No press release, no grand opening, just a standing Saturday morning that predates every storefront on this list by eight decades.
That's the real rhythm of this neighborhood. Some corners move fast and quiet. Others move slow and loud. Knowing the difference is how you actually get the most out of living here.
If you're already an East Liberty regular and this kind of block-by-block detail is what you look for before deciding where to spend a Friday night, you'll probably want the same level of detail when it's time to buy or sell here too. The Kate White Team tracks this neighborhood the way a resident does, not the way a portal does, and we're always happy to talk through what a specific block or building is actually like to live on. Reach out anytime, even if a transaction is nowhere on your radar yet.
