Kirkwood mixed-used development Pratt Pullman District will welcome its first tenant next month, along with a unique alcohol park set on rails.
The Abby Singer will debut in mid-May in conjunction with the opening of “Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience,” the Atlanta Business Chronicle first reported. Developer Adam Rosenfelt confirmed the news to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
Rosenfelt’s movie production company, Atomic Entertainment, is building Pratt Pullman, which will also include a movie sound stage among the multiple historic industrial buildings on the site.
The historic 27-acre Pratt Pullman property at 225 Rogers St. NE was once used to produce agricultural machinery, then as a location to repair Pullman sleeper cars.
The Abby Singer comes from chef Mike Horn and offers a Midwestern-influenced menu with items including the Juicy Lucy burger with cheese in the middle of a beef patty and tater tot hot dish. The concept has been operating as a pop-up for the past few months at restaurants and breweries around metro Atlanta.
Named for the penultimate shot in a day of shooting a film, the Abby Singer is a nod to Horn’s background in film.
He said he developed the menu with chef-partner Jeffrey Peterson, who was inspired by the “church food” his mother and grandmother would make in his native Minnesota.
Horn, who moved to the Atlanta area in 2019, said the buildout for the Abby Singer space was done to facilitate future filming needs, including measuring the width of the bar to make sure a film dolly could fit behind it.
Rosenfelt said Horn’s film background made the Abby Singer an ideal first tenant for the Pratt Pullman development.
“The intention of the development overall is to utilize the creative and cultural economies,” Rosenfelt said. “With (Horn’s) background in film, it felt cool from an evolutionary perspective. We’ll have a lot of restaurants that have nothing to do with the film world, but we thought that was a fun way for us to start.”
Horn will also operate a mobile alcohol park adjacent to the Abby Singer brick-and-mortar that will serve wine, about a dozen craft beers and cocktails.
Housed in shipping containers with train wheels attached to the bottom, the mobile units will sit on a section of the rail lines that run through Pratt Pullman.
Rosenfelt said the idea for using shipping containers sprang from a desire to offer an alternative to a traditional brewery at the development. The desire was to present multiple beer and drink options without committing to any one brewery or brand.
He began doing research, traveling to the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth and meeting with fabricators and welders to design a prototype for his bar on wheels.
The mobile car idea, which will also house other food and beverage options as well as light retail, will traverse the entire development, with the plan to add and move cars as needed.
“What’s really cool about it is, they’re movable,” Rosenfelt said. “So the beer garden might be over here today, and next month it might be being showcased in a building, and that was sort of the whole evolution of the concept.”
Rosenfelt said he can’t yet comment on the status of Bellsmouth, which was set to open as an all-day cafe inside the development from the team behind 8Arm, though he confirmed that a second brick-and-mortar concept restaurant will open to support guests who attend the Van Gogh experience.
The chef’s market will continue in the coming months as well, featuring a rotating roster of local pop-ups daily, with expanded offerings on the weekend.
Seating will be available inside the building housing the chef’s market, in addition to several outdoor eating options including on the patio of Abby Singer and near the alcohol park.
The Van Gogh experience will open May 19 and will run through 2021.
Read more stories like this by liking Atlanta Restaurant Scene on Facebook, following @ATLDiningNews on Twitter and @ajcdining on Instagram.
About the Author
