Scoop: Longtime Charlotte restaurant Bonterra is expanding into Phillips Place
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Renderings are courtesy of JD Duncan. The architect is LS3P Associates Ltd.
Bonterra is opening a second location in Phillips Place early next year. Bonterra Coffee and Wine Bar will have a Dean & DeLuca vibe, serving coffee, breakfast and lunch during the day, then transitioning to wine and appetizers in the evening.
Details: Bonterra will take over the 3,600 square-foot spot that Coplons is currently in, developer Lincoln Harris confirmed. The developer is in the midst of finding a new spot for Coplons within the shopping center.
What to expect: The new Bonterra will serve La Colombe coffee along with pastries starting early in the morning. It’ll transition to a full-service breakfast starting at 7, then to lunch a few hours after that. By 4 it’ll turn into a wine bar, owner JD Duncan says, with light appetizers, cheeses and tapas but no full-service dinner.
The space will have couches, Wifi and places to plug in your laptop. It’ll feel like a coffee shop in the morning, then like a wine bar at night, Duncan says. He plans to have live music periodically, plus special events like wine tastings.
- “We are excited about having Bonterra and one of the premier restauranteurs in Charlotte coming to Phillips Place,” developer Johnny Harris said through a spokesperson.
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Fun fact: Harris has long been a big Bonterra fan.
“(Harris) has been begging me to go in there,” Duncan says of his new Phillips Place spot. “He wants to replicate the old Dean & DeLuca wine bar. It used to be such a great little SouthPark hangout to sit and have a glass of wine and enjoy a cheese board. This’ll have the same feel.”
Zoom out: Phillips Place, an upscale south Charlotte retail destination that opened in 1997 as the city’s first mixed-use development, is in the midst of a $50 million makeover that includes an extensive “cosmetic refresh.” It has added a number of new tenants — like Ladies of Lineage and the ritzy three-story RH Charlotte (formerly known as Restoration Hardware) — and lost others, like Upstream and Wolfgang Puck.
Flashback: Bonterra has long been a Dilworth favorite. For more than two decades it has operated its renowned restaurant out of an old church on Cleveland Avenue that dates back to the 1890s. Despite rumors about encroaching development, Duncan says nothing’s changing about the original location.
“We’re not going anywhere over there,” Duncan says.