Ask a longtime Concord resident about the old Cabarrus Theatre and you'll likely hear about sticky floors and bottle caps traded for tickets. The building at 22 Union Street North opened in 1939 as a single-screen movie house and was, by local account, the first structure in the county to have air conditioning. It closed to the public in 1977. For nearly 50 years, nobody walked past that block knowing what was still up there.
That's not a metaphor. When the theater became office space for Concord National Bank, and later Fifth Third Bank, a second floor was built inside the building, physically covering the original vaulted mezzanine and its barrel bow truss ceiling. Generations of Concord residents drove and walked past that storefront without any idea there was a hidden room stacked above their heads. The ceiling came back into view in 2025, when the building reopened as The District Exchange, a two-story micro-retail and dining hub with its own staircase entrance from Union Street leading straight up to what used to be sealed off.
This matters for a reason that goes beyond one renovated building. Look closely at what's actually changed on this stretch of Union Street over the past year and a pattern emerges. Concord's downtown isn't expanding by adding square footage. It's expanding by unlocking square footage that was already there, just closed off, underused, or reserved for cars instead of people. The theater is the clearest example, but it's not the only one.
Twenty Storefronts, Not Twenty New Buildings
As of November 2025, The District Exchange was fully leased, with roughly 20 micro-retail spaces filled almost entirely by local and regional owner-operators. The anchors are Crane Coffee Co., which chose the building for its flagship location and quickly became a meeting spot for both quick coffee runs and longer sit-downs, and First-N-Flights Taproom & Lounge, a beer and wine shop opened by first-time business owners Eric Granillo and his wife. Bae's Burgers, an established name out of Mooresville, signed on to take over three adjoining first-floor suites for a second location slated to open this summer.
What stands out isn't just the mix of coffee, wine, and burgers under one roof. It's how many of the smaller tenants are proven concepts expanding from somewhere else nearby rather than new ideas testing the waters for the first time. Decadence Popcorn and Vintage Vibes both already had a following in Kannapolis before opening a second spot here. Life is Sweet, a candy shop that started in New Hampshire, had already branched into McAdenville and Lake Wylie before landing on Union Street. Red Bird Thread Co. brought curated fabrics and sewing classes, and A Ceylon Story filled a gap nobody else downtown was covering with goods and apparel inspired by Sri Lankan textile heritage.
Businesses that have already proven themselves elsewhere choosing this specific block is worth noticing. It's a sign that the demand for foot traffic on Union Street isn't speculative anymore. The building sits across from Hawthorne's and B&K Tea Cafe and right next door to Hotel Concord, in a stretch that was, until recently, defined more by construction fencing than commerce.
The Street Outside Went Through the Same Move
The building isn't the only piece of downtown that got reallocated rather than rebuilt from scratch. The Union Street streetscape project, a roughly $9.5 million effort that had residents rerouting around fencing and torn-up pavement for the better part of two years, wrapped with a ribbon cutting in May 2025. The finished corridor runs from Killarney Avenue to just south of Corban Avenue, and the change that mattered most wasn't new pavement. It was what the city chose to do with the space it already had.
Sidewalks widened to 22 feet. Travel lanes narrowed to 11 feet. Much of the on-street parking that used to line Union Street was removed to make room for the wider sidewalks, tree planters, and outdoor dining space that now define the block. Nobody added new land to downtown Concord. The city just decided the street should work harder for pedestrians than it had been working for parked cars.
The project earned a 2025 Award of Merit for Best Outdoor Space Improvement from the North Carolina Main Street and Rural Planning Center, presented at the statewide Main Street Awards ceremony on March 11, 2026, in New Bern, one of thirteen North Carolina communities recognized that day.
Carrying a Drink Between Storefronts Is Legal Now
The other change on this block didn't require construction at all. Concord's downtown social district runs daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and it lets people carry a drink from one participating business to another as they move along the street. That single rule turns a row of separate storefronts into something closer to one continuous space. A coffee at Crane, a pour at First-N-Flights, a walk past the candy wall at Life is Sweet, all without starting over at each door. It's the same buildings and the same businesses, just governed by a rule that lets them function together instead of in isolation.
The Block Becomes a Stage a Few Nights a Summer
This same instinct, use what's already there instead of building something new, shows up in how downtown Concord handles its summer calendar. Harmony Nights, the city's free outdoor concert series, sets up on Union Street in front of the historic courthouse rather than at a dedicated venue. This year's lineup included the Carolina Barnburners in June and The Hitmen Band in August, drawing residents with lawn chairs to a stretch of sidewalk that spends most of its year as a place people simply walk through on their way somewhere else.
A courthouse lawn becoming a concert venue a handful of Saturdays a summer is the same logic as a sealed mezzanine becoming a coffee shop, and a parking lane becoming a sidewalk. None of it required new land. It required deciding that space already downtown could be asked to do more than one job.
Even the smaller moves fit the pattern. The Mercantile on Market recently celebrated a move to 40 Union Street, another case of a business settling into existing downtown storefronts rather than a newly built one.
What This Means If You Already Live Here
None of this changes the math of moving to Concord or comparing it against another Lake Norman-area town. That's a different conversation for a different day. What it does change is what a Saturday downtown actually looks like now compared to two years ago, when half the block was behind fencing and the theater building was still just an old bank office nobody thought much about.
If you haven't been up the staircase at The District Exchange yet, the ceiling alone is worth the trip. It's been almost 50 years since anyone but the building itself has seen it in full.
If you're already thinking ahead to what a home near this kind of walkable, reinvesting downtown might be worth to you and your family, that's a conversation I'd be glad to have. Seema Jay works across Concord, Mooresville, Lake Norman, and the greater Charlotte area, and understanding how a downtown actually functions day to day is part of understanding whether a neighborhood fits how you want to live. Let's Connect.
