Johns Creek Boardwalk at Town Center: What to Know Now

In May, the evening center of gravity in Johns Creek moved. For years, if you wanted to hear a band outdoors on a Friday, you drove to Newtown Park and set a chair under the trees at the Mark Burkhalter Amphitheater. That is still an option. It is no longer the only one.

The Boardwalk at Town Center opened on May 8 with a concert, a ribbon cutting, and a drone show over the pond behind City Hall. Between now and Labor Day, the summer concert series has been quietly rotating between the two venues, and by late October a $560 million mixed-use district a quarter mile away will flip a switch on a walkable stretch of Johns Creek Parkway that has never had one. If you live here, the geography of a weeknight is different than it was six months ago, and it is about to change again.

The Pond Behind City Hall Is Not A Backdrop Anymore

The Boardwalk at Town Center sits on a 20-acre property behind City Hall at 11362 Lakefield Drive, bordered by Medlock Bridge Road and stretching between Johns Creek Parkway and East Johns Crossing, with hours from 6 a.m. to midnight. The park features a 15-foot wide elevated trail, a bandshell and amphitheater, terraced seating, pond overlooks, and pedestrian plazas. Construction of the $39 million project was slated for completion this summer, with pond overlooks, pedestrian plazas, trails through wetlands and terraced seating all part of the plan.

The interesting design decision is scale. The Boardwalk amphitheater initially felt intimate and even slightly undersized, but it now makes more sense. These events are not built for massive festival crowds. They are designed for a few hundred people at a time. That is a different product than Newtown Park's lawn, and residents are already treating it that way. There is a small but telling feature: the ability to reserve tables in the amphitheater, which suggests the city expects the space to be used not just casually, but intentionally, for birthdays, small group gatherings, and planned evenings out.

The takeaway for a resident: this is not a replacement for Newtown Park. It is a second venue with a different vibe, and the calendar is now written for both.

What The Calendar Actually Looks Like

The 2026 series is free, and the food-truck rotation is where the personality lives. Food trucks are on-site, with beer and wine available for purchase, a list posted on the city's event page for the current week, gates open at 6 p.m., music at 7 p.m., and seating is first-come, first-served.

The grand opening lineup on May 8 included food trucks Auggie's Lucky Tacos, Gekko Hibachi Grill, Azucar Cuban Cuisine, King of Pops, and YOM, with a drone show at 9:45 p.m. The pattern is worth noting for anyone planning around it. Newtown carries the mid-summer weekends. The Boardwalk carries the openers, the July holiday, and the September closer. Two of the last three dates on the calendar are on the pond, which is the city's way of teaching residents where the new front door is.

The Tunnel Is The Quiet Story

Cross Medlock Bridge Road on foot right now and you will understand why the second half of this summer matters. Medlock Bridge Road, SR 141, is more than a busy highway; it is a barrier, and the city is trying to change that with a pedestrian tunnel under construction beneath SR 141, designed to connect Creekside Park and the eastern side of Town Center directly to the retail and restaurant areas on the west side.

The city broke ground on the tunnel in November 2024, and the crossing will link the Town Center to retail and restaurants on the west side of Medlock Bridge Road, with a design that features an arch culvert underpass. Construction is expected to be completed in summer 2026.

This may end up being one of the most important Town Center projects. Without safe pedestrian access, Town Center remains fragmented. With the tunnel, residents could walk from parks to restaurants without crossing multiple lanes of traffic. That changes how often people choose to stay, linger, and spend time in the area.

The tunnel is not glamorous. It is an arch culvert under a state highway. What it does is reframe the Boardwalk from a park you drive to into the eastern anchor of a walkable pair. For a resident, that means the walk from a Saturday concert to a Sunday coffee stops requiring a car and a second parking hunt.

October 29, And The Names Worth Learning Now

STIR, a cocktail bar and scratch kitchen from Chattanooga, is officially set to open its first Georgia location at Medley, the $560 million mixed-use development by Toro Development Company. The 6,000-square-foot restaurant is scheduled to open during Medley's grand debut on October 29, 2026, and will be joined next door by Tonic House, a 1,000-square-foot satellite cocktail bar opening directly onto the plaza for a walk-up experience.

Medley itself is worth understanding at scale. The development will ultimately feature 200,000 square feet of retail and dining, 900 residences, lifestyle office space, and a 25,000-square-foot central plaza hosting more than 200 events annually, having broken ground in January 2025. The project is led by Toro Development, whose founder Mark Toro previously pioneered the Avalon in Alpharetta and Colony Square in Midtown.

The tenant list is where a resident should be paying attention, because it will reset what "picking up dinner" means on the north end of the city.

• Coffee, grocery, morning routine: Trader Joe's will open a new location at Medley Johns Creek in 2026. The Nest Cafe, the Alpharetta breakfast-and-lunch spot that opened in 2016 and later expanded to Milton, will join Medley as its first outside expansion.
• Dinner and drinks: STIR and Tonic House, plus Ford Fry's Little Rey and Fadó Irish Pub, previously announced by Toro Development for the site.
• The rest of the block: Announced tenants also include Atlanta-based Thai restaurant 26 Thai Kitchen and Bar, Five Daughters Bakery, Drybar Shops, Minnie Olivia, Burdlife, Amorino, Pause, Fogón and Lions, and Clean Your Dirty Face. The Nest Cafe is expected to open this fall alongside barber shop The Commodore, eyewear brand Warby Parker, and home decor and apparel brand 13 Hub Lane.
• Office and daytime foot traffic: Boehringer Ingelheim, a leader in animal health innovation, will occupy over 70,000 square feet in Medley's office space, which will become the company's new U.S. headquarters with close to 500 employees.

The wider Town Center context is that Medley is not landing alone. Boston Scientific's new life sciences research and development facility opened earlier this year adjacent to Medley with plans to bring more than 300 employees to the area, and one-half mile away Emory Johns Creek Hospital received approval to more than double its hospital and medical office space over the next 20 years. The daytime population of the district is going up before the restaurants open, which is unusual and probably good for the ones that do.

The Corridor In Between

While everyone watches the Town Center, the older retail corridor keeps churning. Dutch Bros Coffee opened a new Johns Creek location on July 25, 2025, at 9630 Medlock Bridge Road. A mile south on State Bridge, the burger category picked up a 24-hour player. The new Whataburger in Johns Creek is at 5825 State Bridge Road, open 24 hours a day, and its décor includes athletic jerseys from nearby Johns Creek High School.

The other side of the ledger matters too. Another Broken Egg Cafe at 9700 Medlock Bridge Road has permanently closed, and for weekend brunch regulars that leaves a noticeable gap in the breakfast category. That gap is exactly what The Nest Cafe is being courted to fill inside Medley in the fall. Whether it holds the same crowd, or whether the crowd gets absorbed into whatever opens next on the older strip, is the question a resident should watch through winter.

What A Resident Should Actually Do Before October

The next four to eight weeks are the last stretch when the Town Center is still quiet enough to explore casually. Walk the elevated trail before the tunnel opens the pedestrian flood from the west. Reserve an amphitheater table for the September 12 show if a birthday or anniversary falls near it. Note where you would park for a Medley visit before the October 29 grand opening reshuffles the traffic pattern on Johns Creek Parkway at McGinnis Ferry.

The city's own framing has been that Medley is the "third place" between home and office. What actually arrives on October 29 is a walkable block, a grocery store, a cocktail bar with an oyster program, and a plaza built for two hundred events a year. That is a real change in how a Friday night works on the north end of Johns Creek, and the residents who spend August walking the Boardwalk and learning the shortcut through Creekside Park will be the ones who look like locals when the ribbon is cut.

If you are thinking about how these shifts change what your home is worth, or what a move within Johns Creek could look like once the Town Center fully opens, Rony Smith-Ghelerter is available for a private consultation.