For years, the joke about Fort Henry Mall was that it existed mostly as a shortcut between parking lots. Then on July 16, Neighborhood Cinema Group opened the region's first IMAX auditorium there, and by the end of the month nearly 9,000 people had bought tickets to see Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" on a screen 70 feet tall and 140 feet wide. NCG's Jeremy Curtis told WJHL the theater had already logged close to 18 sold-out shows. Two miles away, downtown Kingsport spent the same stretch of 2026 quietly finishing a different kind of buildout, one that has nothing to do with movies and everything to do with where you actually eat dinner before or after one.
Those two things happening in the same summer is not a coincidence you'd notice from a single news story. It only shows up when you put the mall and Main Street side by side, and once you do, the shape of the change becomes obvious: Kingsport residents now have two genuinely different reasons to leave the house on a weeknight, where a couple of years ago they mostly had one, and it usually meant driving toward Johnson City.
The Multiplex Nobody Expected to Matter Again
The IMAX project had been talked about for roughly a decade before it opened, according to Mayor Paul Montgomery, and formally announced three years before that, in 2023. What finally landed in July is a 7,000-square-foot auditorium with close to 200 luxury reclining seats and IMAX's laser projection system, built inside a mall that had spent a long stretch being described as underused. NCG CEO Jeff Geiger has framed the investment as a bet on a growing market rather than a hedge on a fading one, and the numbers from opening weeks back that up. IMAX's exclusive territory agreements mean this is the only IMAX screen within 50 miles, which flips the usual traffic pattern: instead of Kingsport residents driving to Knoxville or Asheville for a premium format, moviegoers from elsewhere in the Tri-Cities are now driving in.
The theater isn't finished changing. An alcohol license was approved on July 8, and NCG has said the next phase includes reclining seats across every auditorium, a remodeled lobby, self-serve Coca-Cola Freestyle stations, and a full-service bar, all planned for later this year. If the mall's next release cycle looks anything like its first, expect the parking lot to be fuller on a Friday night than it has been in a long time.
Two Miles Away, Downtown Finished a Different Project
While the mall was under construction, downtown Kingsport was doing its own quieter version of the same thing. Robin Cleary, executive director of the Downtown Kingsport Association, told WCYB that 17 businesses opened downtown in a single year, with the heaviest concentration in food and beverage between 2024 and 2025. That is not a rounding error for a downtown grid the size of Kingsport's. It is the difference between a handful of dependable regulars and an actual list you have to keep track of.
Some of what opened, in case you haven't made it downtown lately:
- Southern Craft BBQ, an urban eatery serving smoked beef, brisket, bourbon-smoked salmon, and cocktails, which its general manager described as part of a deliberate push to bring more foot traffic back to Main Street.
- Mama D's Brunch and Catering, one of the newer breakfast additions to the block.
- Grace Meadows Creamery, which chose downtown Kingsport for its third location, a small but telling vote of confidence from a business that already had two other spots to pick from.
- Krazy Chicken International at 114 Broad Street, serving American and South American food with a full bar.
- Le Brique Bistro at 113 West Market Street, a weekday lunch spot from Allison Russell, who also runs Taylored Venue & Events and Shabby Allie's.
- 6ix Grist & Grind Brewhouse, a craft brewery and coffee bar with roughly 15 rotating taps.
- Gypsy Bean, Leaves & Things and Uptown Family Bakery, covering coffee, tea, and a rotating case of cinnamon rolls and scones.
Then there's The Black Olive, which soft-opened its Kingsport location at 818 Jonathan Way in February. The Italian restaurant already had spots in Jonesborough, Johnson City, and Elizabethton, and its general manager told WJHL that regulars who used to drive out of town for it were excited to have one closer to home. That's the detail worth sitting with. For a long time, Kingsport was the place you left to get certain things. The Black Olive's fourth location is a small, specific example of that pattern running the other way.
What Actually Changed
Neither the IMAX nor the downtown boom is a bigger story on its own. Put together, they describe a city that built two distinct evening-out options in the same window of time, and they don't compete with each other so much as split the job. The mall corridor pulls people in for something you can't get anywhere else in a 50-mile radius. Downtown pulls people in for a night out that's walkable, varied, and doesn't require getting on the highway at all. A resident deciding what to do on a Friday now has an actual choice between the two, which is a different situation than choosing between "the usual place" and driving to Johnson City because nothing new had opened locally in a while.
It's also worth saying plainly that this is not a story about the mall being "saved" or downtown being "back." Both of those framings assume a decline that needs reversing. What happened here is closer to two separate groups, a national cinema chain and a cluster of independent local operators, deciding around the same time that Kingsport was worth investing in, for their own separate reasons. The IMAX bet is about regional draw and exclusive territory rights. The downtown bet, according to Cleary, was built on community support, affordable costs, and an already lively street. Different math, same season, same city.
The Trail That Runs Through All of It
If you walk or bike the Greenbelt regularly, you've probably run into at least one detour this summer. Crews have been working on the Clinchfield Street bridge as part of a project expected to take about six months, and the trail has seen a handful of short, weeklong reroutes while sections of the deck and sidewalk get replaced. Local reporting on the exact reroute weeks has varied slightly, with one detour running the week of August 3 through 7 and another announcement putting a section back on its normal path by the afternoon of August 14. Either way, the pattern has been the same all summer: walkers and cyclists get shifted onto the sidewalk along Cherokee Village Drive and Clinchfield Street for a few days at a time, then routed back onto the paved trail once that stretch of work wraps.
None of this is dramatic on its own. But it's one more example of the same thing happening at the city level that's happening with the mall and downtown: steady, overlapping investment in the pieces of daily life that don't usually make headlines until you add them up. A new screen, a rebuilt Main Street, a bridge getting fixed while people are still using the trail around it. That's a lot of simultaneous change for one summer in a city this size.
If you're weighing what an evening in Kingsport looks like these days, or you're curious what any of this means for a specific block or neighborhood you're watching, Jessica Brooks knows this market block by block, not just headline by headline. Let's Connect.
