The Colonnade’s owners aim to find a buyer who will preserve its legacy

Speaking to Jodi Stallings, you can hear her voice tittering on the edge of exhaustion. Since announcing the sale of The Colonnade on Aug. 7, Stallings and her husband, David, have been fielding calls from journalists, chatting with long-tenured staff, and quelling the fears of regulars concerned that the nearly century-old Southern restaurant would close.

Stallings is finally ready to retire and insists that The Colonnade will live on under a new owner. She won’t sell the Cheshire Bridge Road dining institution to anyone who intends to change the business.

“I’ve been in the restaurant since I was nine. It’s been my entire life. I want our lives to slow down,” Stallings said of selling The Colonnade. “The restaurant business is tough, especially as a single establishment and with quite a legacy. There’s a lot of energy in this restaurant. I want it to continue in Atlanta.”

At 97 years old, The Colonnade may be best known for its diverse clientele, including senior citizens and members of Atlanta’s LGBTQ community. It’s a unique assemblage of people affectionally referred to as “the gays and the grays.” But The Colonnade casts a much wider net in Atlanta, with Gen Alpha and Gen Z dining with their Millennial and Gen X parents or Boomer generation grandparents. It’s how new generations become acquainted with, and fall in love with, the good, old-fashioned Southern hospitality and food at The Colonnade.

“My family has been dining at The Colonnade for over 30 plus years, celebrating many milestones: engagement, Mother’s and Father’s Day, graduation,” one regular told Rough Draft. “To say this wonderful and welcoming restaurant is deeply embedded in our family history and memories is an understatement.”

Stallings respects how much people cherish The Colonnade, especially after several unforeseen events threatened the restaurant’s existence on Cheshire Bridge.

Road closures caused by construction and bridge fires , followed by a global pandemic, saw businesses up and down Cheshire Bridge experience a sharp decline in sales for months at a time, including at restaurants like Nakato, Nino’s, and The Colonnade.

Related Link: Nino’s gets a glow-up with its new Italian cocktail bar Dopo Lavoro

An Atlanta and family legacy

Opened in 1927, The Colonnade has been part of Stallings’s life since 1979 when her dad took ownership. She was 9 years old and spent most of her days there as a child, eventually working alongside her dad when she got older. In 2019, he sold the restaurant to Stallings and her husband, keeping The Colonnade in the family.

A year later, the COVID-19 pandemic would wreak havoc on the restaurant industry. It became an all-out battle for survival during the early months of the health crisis and there were days Stallings worried The Colonnade might not make it.

The 9,000-square-foot restaurant relies on its regulars, a full dining room and martini-slinging bar, and busy banquet space to pay the rent. Between the dining room, bar, and banquet room, The Colonnade seats 280 people at capacity.

Pivoting became more than a PR buzzword for restaurants in 2020, including for The Colonnade. Stallings closed the restaurant for four months , briefly opening on Mother’s Day to serve its famous fried chicken from the parking lot. Shifting The Colonnade’s 46 employees and extensive dining operation to takeout wasn’t possible. Closing for a few months allowed them time to shore up the restaurant before reopening for outdoor dining later that summer.

Despite their best efforts to financially secure the restaurant and its employees, sales were down nearly 70% by the end of 2020. Labor and ingredient costs had also increased. It became clear to many longtime regulars that Atlanta might lose The Colonnade. A fundraiser set up on behalf of The Colonnade raised close to $125,000 to help the Stallings and their employees, many of whom have been with the restaurant for decades, navigate the uncertain months ahead.

The Aug. 7 headlines from news outlets across Atlanta regarding the impending sale of The Colonnade brought back memories of 2020. People panicked reading the real estate listing, keying in on one bullet point that simply read, “keep or convert.” The thought of converting The Colonnade into another restaurant, or worse, knocking it down for apartments, set off a firestorm of online comments about the sale, with most raising red flags that it could spell the end of The Colonnade.

Sealing the deal

More than four years from the start of the pandemic, six years from taking ownership, and 45 years from when her dad bought the restaurant, Stallings said it’s time for her family to pass the torch. She’s modeling the decision-making process after Jack Clark when he sold The Colonnade to her father, Paul Jones, in 1979.

“When the previous owner took my dad to Michigan to show him where he was from, he wanted my dad to meet the family and understand what he was taking on with The Colonnade,” said Stallings. “I hope to do something similar with potential buyers. I’m not selling The Colonnade to throw it away. They need to understand why it matters to our family and our customers.”

Related Link: All coverage on The Colonnade

Stallings made it clear that they aren’t in jeopardy of losing the lease on the building, owned by Selig Enterprises. The company’s chairman and CEO, Steve Selig, often eats at The Colonnade. According to Stallings, he’s a firm believer in retaining legacy tenants. Selig Enterprises also owns the buildings of other iconic Atlanta restaurants like Manual’s Tavern, Smith’s Old Bar, and The Silver Skillet.

None of the potential buyers who’ve approached the Stallings about purchasing The Colonnade, she said, plan to change the restaurant, other than make some necessary upgrades and improvements to keep it ticking over for decades to come.

That will include retaining its current staff, like Rhea Merritt who joined the restaurant in the early 1970s. You’ll often find her behind the bar in the lounge serving up ice-cold martinis . Then there’s Randell Stenson at the host stand. He’s been meeting, greeting, and calling out names of parties waiting to dine at The Colonnade for 32 years.

Some of the restaurant’s regulars, now fixtures at The Colonnade, have been dining there since the 1970s and 1980s.

Considering the legacy

“I’ve been going to The Colonnade for about 40 years and would be sad to see it close. When you slide into the cozy little bar and watch those martinis get shaken, poured, and passed out, you feel kinda like you’re in a club with all types [of people] happy to be together,” one regular said of why he hopes the new owners take stock in the inclusive culture at The Colonnade. “Where will the alternative ‘Gays & Grays’ destination be? I’m on the gray side, so my perspective of the Atlanta restaurant/bar scene is long and pretty wide. I don’t see an alternative.”

You hear sentiments like this time and again from patrons of The Colonnade, loyal to a restaurant without a polished social media presence or populated by influencers dining for the ‘gram or hot takes on TikTok. Up until 2014, the restaurant was cash-only and didn’t take credit cards .

On Cheshire Bridge Road, with its quirky collection of strip clubs, antique stores, LGBTQ nightclubs, and restaurants like The Colonnade, the tug-of-war plays out every day between old and new Atlanta. Not all change is bad, but some residents would like to see the city work toward blending the cultures and businesses of past, present, and future Atlanta on busy corridors like Cheshire Bridge.

“I have fond memories of going to The Colonnade with my grandparents on Sunday evenings. They lived on Lenox Road [in the 1980s] near the train tracks,” one native Atlantan said. “I now live in the same neighborhood and it makes me feel connected to not only them but the feel of an old Atlanta.”

While this resident understands the need to progress as a city, she also feels a sense of urgency to integrate and preserve places like The Colonnade into Atlanta’s rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods.

“Atlanta has changed over the decades, but the feel of the neighborhood, the skeleton of what once was, will always be here,” she added. “As I see Cheshire Bridge dilapidated, move up and on, build upon itself for the worse (i.e. Sam’s Corner) and then for the better (The Buttery, The Daily Chew), it saddens me but also gives hope.”

In an industry where restaurants often don’t survive the first five years in business, The Colonnade continues to endure – and for almost a century. Multiple owners and generations of customers became custodians of its legacy in Atlanta.

For Stallings, retirement from the restaurant business will mean a quieter life at her home in the North Georgia mountains. It’s bittersweet. She’ll miss being part of The Colonnade and the lives of customers. Her aim right now, however, is to find a buyer who will take as much pride in owning The Colonnade as she and her family have for the last 45 years.

“I’m on my sixth generation of customers. That’s amazing. I cherish that. We’re fortunate to be in that position as a restaurant,” Stallings said. “The Colonnade isn’t and shouldn’t go anywhere. It’s a mainstay in Atlanta.”

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