"Most residents use ride shares or walk to restaurants in our neighborhood." That sentence comes from the June 2, 2025 minutes of the Cannonborough-Elliottborough Neighborhood Association. It was the reason given when Heather Coleman asked neighbors to support a parking variance for a new restaurant planned inside the old YMCA building at 61 Cannon Street. Thirteen people attended that meeting, and all of them voted to support it.
The restaurant in that building is Kyn, and it is open now. Within a short walk of its door, Cannon Street has added a brewery taproom, gained a bakery and a relocated farm-to-table restaurant at its St. Philip corner, and is waiting on a Mexican restaurant from a Denver-based couple. In a September story on Kyn, The Post and Courier called Cannon "the residential street" that new and forthcoming restaurants are "flocking to." Much of how that happened is recorded in neighborhood meeting minutes, and the same minutes show the next question the street is working through.
The Neighborhood Set the Terms Before the Restaurants Arrived
The 2025 vote for 61 Cannon was not the first. At a June 3, 2024 meeting, architect Steve Ramos presented an early plan for Pioneer Alley, a mixed-use project at the corner of Rutledge Avenue and Cannon Street with commercial and restaurant space on the ground floor. Under the rules then in place, those uses required 27 parking spaces. The plan asked to reduce that number to zero. The minutes from that meeting say: "In the past, our neighborhood has supported variances for restaurant parking to help increase commercial growth/development in hood."
That is the street's working rule as the association has written it down. A restaurant does not have to bring its own parking lot to Cannon, because the association expects its guests to arrive on foot or by rideshare. In a neighborhood of 19th-century houses and old institutional buildings, that rule is what makes a former YMCA or an old house workable as a restaurant.
The Street, Read by Address
Going up the street numbers from the old YMCA, this is what the parking question has produced so far.
- Kyn, 61 Cannon St. Tae Woo Lee and Peter Marcus opened it in the brick building that once housed a YMCA established in 1866. It serves gluten-free hand rolls at a curved sushi bar, a hamachi crudo garnished with perilla that the owners grow outside the restaurant, bluefin tuna "cannolis" in fried wonton shells, and the Tuna Fight Club, a side-by-side tasting of akami, chutoro and otoro. Lee called it "the most untraditional sushi restaurant you're going to find." Kyn is open noon to 4 p.m. and 5 to 10 p.m. daily.
- Southbound, 72 Cannon St. Ryan and Kelleanne Jones opened it in February 2023 with chef Peter Booker. The menu is live-fire cooking with seasonal meat and seafood.
- The Co-Op, 81 Cannon St., Suite 101. Owner Jess Patterson opened the brand's first official downtown location here by May 2024. It serves frosé, sandwiches and coffee, and this location also pours wine and cocktails.
- Alteño, 89 Cannon St. Johnny and Kasie Curiel are bringing wood-fired Mexican cooking with house dry-aged fish to the Charlee building. It has not opened yet.
- Two Blokes Brewing, 114 Cannon St. Rhett and Haley Anderson opened a second taproom on Aug. 11 in a 19th-century house near MUSC. It serves seasonal and small-batch beers alongside flatbreads, sandwiches, pretzels and wings.
Around the corner on St. Philip Street, two more places belong to the same cluster. Sorghum & Salt moved to 186 St. Philip, at the Cannon intersection, in June 2025. Next door at 185 St. Philip, Jason and Annie Vieira opened Annie Mae's Bakeshop in March 2026, with Southern-style biscuits, pies and cake by the slice.
Every one of these is in a building that already stood on the block, and none of them comes with a parking lot.
What the Owners Say Brought Them Here
The owners' own explanations line up with the reasoning in the association's minutes. When Tres Jackson moved Sorghum & Salt less than half a mile from Coming Street, he said the new neighborhood was more welcoming to walk-by customers and closer to the Upper King nightlife. Haley Anderson said a downtown location that more people could reach had been an expansion goal for Two Blokes. Ryan Jones described Southbound as a concept built around the space the couple found and shaped through conversations with their landlord. Even the live fire came partly from the building's own history with fire.
None of the three talked about drawing diners from across the region. They talked about foot traffic, being close to other places, and working with an old building as it is. The parking variances made all three possible.
In July, the Questions Changed From Parking to Noise
On July 6, 2026, 22 people attended the association meeting. That was more than the 13 who had approved the parking variance for 61 Cannon the year before. Neil Stevenson presented a conceptual plan for the same building: extend the rooftop and add a small bar with a covered pergola, a bathroom and stair access.
This time, the minutes record concerns:
Concerns are raised regarding the potential addition of a rooftop bar. Questions are also raised regarding the hours of operation; late night amplified music/DJ ; and future tenants' plans for the extended rooftop. It is suggested that focus is placed on no amplified music, especially late night (after 10pm) when presenting to the BAR. Suggestions are also made to partially enclose the rooftop to limit the potential noise.
The meeting did not reject the restaurant or the idea of activity on the roof. Neighbors proposed conditions: a time limit on amplified music and a partial enclosure. In 2024 and 2025 the association weighed how many cars a restaurant would add to the street. In July 2026 it was weighing what can be heard from the street at 10 p.m. A street that accepted walkable restaurants is now working out what walkable nights should sound like.
The rooftop plan has not reached a decision. Agendas for the city's Board of Architectural Review on July 9, Aug. 13, Aug. 27, Sept. 10 and Sept. 24, 2026 do not list 61 Cannon. The association scheduled a Sept. 14 meeting, but minutes for it have not been posted.
What's Still Pending as of Oct. 4
Three items will shape how the street looks and sounds over the next year. None of them has reached the street yet.
| Item | Latest public status | Most recent date on record |
|---|---|---|
| Alteño, 89 Cannon | Target moved from summer to "Early Fall 2026," then to "slated to open in October 2026." No opening day announced. | Oct. 2, 2026 |
| Rooftop bar, 61 Cannon | Conceptual plan presented to the association. Not on any BAR agenda through Sept. 24. | July 6, 2026 |
| Pioneer Alley, Rutledge and Cannon | City Council passed both rezoning ordinances on second and third readings and ratified them. No construction start has been confirmed. | Aug. 19, 2025 |
The opening date for Alteño has moved twice, so the safest way to know it's open is a posted opening on the restaurant's own channels. The Curiels already run an Alteño in Cherry Creek, Colorado. Pioneer Alley is the biggest of the three, and its zoning is settled. When the Planning Commission approved its rezoning on June 18, 2025, the record described up to 5,000 square feet of commercial space at the Rutledge corner. That ground-floor space is the one that came with the 2024 request to cut commercial parking from 27 spaces to zero.
The association's minutes are public and posted on the CENA site, and BAR agendas are posted in the City of Charleston Agenda Center. Those two pages are where the rooftop at 61 Cannon will show up next, and the BAR agenda will also show any conditions on hours or music that come with it.
Our team at Ever Haus Properties follows how the peninsula's blocks change, from the minutes of a neighborhood meeting to the night a new kitchen opens. If you'd like to talk through what's happening on Cannon Street or nearby, Let's Connect.
