Backstreets Bar and Grill sat still for twenty-three years. It opened in Hickory in the mid-1990s, built a following strong enough that people still drive across town for the wings and the mussels, and then did nothing about expanding until 2019, when a second location opened on Devine Street in Columbia, South Carolina. Twenty-three years of staying put, then one new city. Seven years after that, in 2026, Backstreets opened a third location, and it chose Newton.
That timing is not a coincidence you can shrug off as good luck. The Newton location sits inside the old Corriher Implement Co. building at 12 S Ashe Avenue, the anchor tenant of a 107-unit apartment project called The Corriher, one block west of the 1924 Courthouse Square. And that block, along with the park and the amphitheater next to it, only became a place a restaurant like Backstreets would bet on after the city spent two years tearing up and rebuilding the ground underneath it. The restaurant is the visible part. The reason it's there is the two blocks around the Courthouse Square that got rebuilt first.
The Block That Got Rebuilt Before Anyone Else Moved
The Downtown Newton Streetscape Revitalization Project started its final phase in mid-January 2024, concentrated on College Avenue near the Courthouse Square, and the city has been posting incremental updates on it ever since, curbing finished by April 2025, pavement milling and traffic signal work into May 2025. The city calls it, in its own materials, the most significant infrastructure investment in generations, and whether or not you'd choose that exact phrase, the map backs it up. The Frank & Sue Jones Amphitheatre at 16 N Main Avenue, across the street from the Courthouse Square, was built during the project's first phase. Yount Park, at the corner of College Avenue and A Street, got doubled in size during the second phase, with new landscaping, new pavers, and a larger performance space added where there used to be less room.
None of that is glamorous work. It's milling, curbing, signal loops, the kind of municipal to-do list that doesn't photograph well. But it's also the reason the block can hold a restaurant, a concert series, and a market at the same time without feeling like three separate things bolted onto an old downtown. The square wasn't retrofitted around Backstreets. Backstreets moved into a square that had already been rebuilt to hold it.
The Corriher project itself wasn't a sure thing. Delco Partners and David E. Looper & Company first announced the 107-residence development in November 2023, with construction on Backstreets planned for early 2024 and the apartments targeted for early 2026. Along the way, the project's footprint depended on the city and Catawba County working out a property swap involving land the county owned on D Street, the kind of quiet real estate mechanics that can stall a project for a year without anyone downtown noticing. It didn't stall this one long enough to matter. Reviews on the restaurant started showing up by late May 2026, which means the opening landed close to its original early-2026 target despite the complication.
Why the Timing Actually Lines Up
Newton Mayor Eddie Haupt framed the restaurant's arrival as part of the city's larger push, calling it part of the "bright future" city council has been building toward. It's a small line, but it matches what the project timeline actually shows: the infrastructure came first, the private investment came second, and the sequence wasn't backward. A regional restaurant group that took twenty-three years to open a second location doesn't pick a third site at random. Backstreets Bar and Grill picked a building that sits on a public square the city had already spent two budget cycles rebuilding.
That same square did double duty as the summer concert venue. The city's free Music on Main series ran select Thursdays at the Frank & Sue Jones Amphitheatre through the summer, food trucks opening at 5 p.m., music from 6 to 8:30, with Main Avenue, A Street, and 1st Street closing to traffic for the evening. This year's lineup included Chairmen of the Board opening the season around Juneteenth, Island Time Band in July, and Gary Lowder & Smokin' Hot closing things out in August. That run is over for the year as of early September. The amphitheater isn't dark, though. Its next confirmed date is the Carolina Makers Market on October 10, back on the same lawn where the concerts just wrapped.
The spring calendar tells a version of the same story. The Foothills Folk Art Festival, held every second Saturday in May on the Courthouse Square, marked what the city called a milestone anniversary this year, and for the first time paired the usual artist booths with a student art showcase pulling work from Newton-Conover City Schools into downtown storefronts. Mary Yount, director of the Downtown Newton Development Association, tied the addition directly to the district's creative economy, noting the alignment between local art teachers and the businesses the festival has helped bring downtown. The festival draws more than 10,000 people in a single day, by the festival's own count, on a square that a decade ago didn't have a rebuilt amphitheater or a doubled park to hold that many people comfortably.
What's Actually Worth Walking to This Fall
If you already live near downtown Newton, the practical question isn't whether any of this is interesting. It's what to do with it between now and the makers market in October. The whole loop is walkable in under fifteen minutes, and it's worth doing in order rather than picking one stop:
- Start at the 1924 Courthouse Square itself, which now houses the History Museum of Catawba County inside the old courthouse building.
- Cross to Yount Park at College and A Street, the space that got doubled in size during the streetscape project's second phase, and is now the closest thing downtown has to an open lawn.
- Continue to the Frank & Sue Jones Amphitheatre on Main Avenue, quiet until October 10 but worth seeing empty, since the stage and seating layout are easier to appreciate without a crowd blocking the sightlines.
- Finish one block over at Backstreets on Ashe Avenue, inside the old Corriher Implement Co. building, for the closest thing to a verdict on whether the last two years of streetscape work actually paid off.
That last stop matters more than it sounds. A business that waited twenty-three years to open a second location and only seven to open a third isn't sentimental about site selection. It's reading foot traffic, parking availability, and whether a downtown can support a dinner crowd on a Tuesday. Backstreets betting on Newton is a data point about the square itself, not just about the menu.
The Loop, Not the List
It would be easy to write this up as five separate good-news items: new restaurant, bigger park, wrapped concert series, upcoming market, milestone festival. That version misses the actual story, which is that all five sit inside the same two blocks the city spent two budget years rebuilding before any of it could happen. The restaurant didn't create the momentum. It confirmed that the momentum the streetscape project built was real enough for a regional operator to bet a location on it.
Whatever comes next for that block, whether it's a fourth Backstreets somewhere else entirely or another vendor at next October's market, it's worth remembering it started with curb work and pavement milling nobody thought was worth a headline in 2024. It usually does.
If you're weighing what a home near this corner of Newton is actually worth, given what's changed on the ground in the last two and a half years, Hartness Hometown Properties can walk you through it. Get expert guidance from start to finish.
