If downtown Apex has felt like a place you love but keep postponing this year, you are not imagining it. The stretch of North Salem Street you drive to for a Saturday coffee has been a one-way construction corridor since late January, and the Peakway shortcut that made the trip from Montvale five minutes shorter is closed too. The good news is that both are on the clock. Here is what actually changed, what quietly opened while everyone was waiting, and how to reset your fall routine before two-way traffic returns.
The one project reshaping every Saturday
The Salem Streetscape is the reason downtown has felt off, and it is worth understanding as one project rather than a rolling series of inconveniences. The roughly $4.7 million Salem Streetscape project, which broke ground in January, aims to transform North Salem Street into a destination that centers walkability and outdoor dining by adding staggered parallel parking, widened paver sidewalks, urban street trees, decorative light poles, string lighting, planter boxes, wayfinding signs, street furniture, and so much more.
Two facts matter for planning purposes. The town committed more than $4.7 million last year to transform North Salem Street with new walkways, lighting, trees and pedestrian-friendly design, and North Salem Street has been restricted to one-way traffic from Saunders Street to West Chatham Street for months. And despite a spring pause, the Streetscape project is on track to be completed by October, and two-way traffic will return at that time, according to Mayor Jacques Gilbert.
That October target is the hinge of the fall calendar. Everything below is built around it.
What quietly opened while the sidewalk was torn up
The Montvale-to-downtown drive is short enough that most residents keep a rotation of three or four spots and rarely audit them. Construction has masked a genuine turnover in that rotation. A few worth knowing:
- Popovers Cafe at 219 N Salem St, Suite 103, inside the Salem Street Promenade. Popovers Cafe, inside the Salem Street Promenade building, combines the family traditions of its owners, Mustafa and Juliette Ozturk. Juliette, from upstate New York, grew up with her grandmother Anna Clare whipping up the egg-based batter for popovers on weekend mornings. Their first day open was on March 13, and Popovers Cafe is open 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. The beverage menu includes tableside pourover coffee made with a house blend from Peak City Coffee roasters.
- Kaara Indian Restaurant at 2700 Stokesdale Ave, Suite 120, in the newer commercial pocket closer to Montvale than downtown. Address: 2700 Stokesdale Ave, Suite 120, Apex, NC 27523. Now open. Modern Indian fine dining with two dining halls, a private room, patio, and a full bar. North and South Indian staples plus roughly 15 chef signatures from a veteran kitchen team. Lunch runs 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and dinner 5 to 10 p.m.
- Lime & Lemon Restaurant & Lounge at 2025 Creekside Landing Dr. A premium Indian restaurant plus a separate late-night lounge with its own entrance, 7,000-plus square feet, a 35-foot bar, DJ lighting, and 200-plus capacity. Lounge cocktails and late-night small plates are planned.
- Scratch Kitchen & Taproom, still going strong on the west side of town for a casual dinner that avoids the streetscape entirely.
The turnover has not all been additive. Alleyway Bookstore announced its closure in a social media post last month, citing a 64% rent hike and other pressures including the streetscape's construction, and Anna's Pizzeria told WRAL they have seen about a 10 to 20% decrease in sales. If Anna's is part of your rotation, this is the season to actually go.
The Peakway closure is doing more than the streetscape
Ask five Montvale neighbors why downtown feels farther this year and most will blame Salem Street. The real culprit is the Peakway. Separately from the streetscape, the Apex Peakway is closed from S. Salem Street to Towhee Drive until summer 2026 for the SW Connector bridge, with traffic detoured onto Olive Chapel, Williams Street, and Salem. If you live west of downtown and used to hop the Peakway to reach Salem Street, the detour funnels you through the same corridor as the streetscape traffic. That second closure is why the west side has quietly become the summer default. It is also why the reopening of two-way Salem traffic in October will feel bigger than a repaved block should feel.
The one-page reference
| What | Status | When it changes |
|---|---|---|
| N. Salem St, Saunders to Chatham | One-way southbound, pedestrian access both sides | Two-way returns at project completion, targeted October 2026 |
| Salem Streetscape construction | Active, roughly 60-day electrical delay logged in spring | Wrap targeted before the holiday shopping season |
| Apex Peakway, S. Salem to Towhee Dr | Closed for SW Connector bridge | Reopens summer 2026, with the bridge itself opening in 2027 |
| GoApex Route 1 | On detour | Beginning Tuesday, January 27, 2026, GoApex Route 1 operates on a detour route, expected to extend until late 2026. |
| GoCary Route 9 | Unaffected | Route 9, which began service to Apex in November 2025, has its own stop on Center Street beside the Historic Apex Depot and will not be affected by construction. |
| Saunders Lot | Expanded | The recent Saunders Lot expansion added 152 new parking spaces right in the heart of downtown, boosting overall parking capacity by 40 percent. |
A fall Saturday from Montvale, built around the constraints
Downtown works right now if you treat it as a morning and evening destination and the west side as a midday one. A working template:
- 8 to 10 a.m., downtown. Park in the expanded Saunders Lot rather than hunting a curb spot on Salem. Walk in for a popover and pourover at Popovers Cafe. Salem is quiet at this hour and the pedestrian access on both sides of the construction is genuinely fine.
- 10 to 12, browse the survivors. Cocoon Gallery on North Salem is worth a slow lap. Cocoon Gallery supports a revolving door of 70 to 80 artists, selling to customers who happen past the store or purchase online. Virtuoso Jewels a few doors down is one of the shops whose owner has been most vocal that downtown is still open. Both benefit from a foot-traffic visit far more than an online order.
- Midday, shift west. Pleasant Park is where the daytime crowd has gone. Pleasant Park opened in fall 2023 at 3400 Pleasant Plains Road, with ninety-two acres, six lighted multipurpose fields, six pickleball courts with real-time occupancy tracking, four tennis courts, four basketball courts, and the 1.5-acre Enchanted Forest playground; Splashlantis, the fenced splash pad, opens Memorial Day weekend and closes near Labor Day. On a fall Saturday the splash pad is done for the year, which means the pickleball courts and playground do the heavy lifting.
- Late afternoon, dinner near home. Kaara on Stokesdale is a five-minute drive from most of Montvale, and its dinner service starts at 5 p.m. Lime & Lemon works for a bigger group or a later evening.
- After dinner, back to Salem. The evening crowd on Salem has held up better than the daytime crowd through construction. If you want to see what the finished streetscape will look like, this is when the string lighting reads best.
What the reopening actually delivers
It helps to know what October is unlocking, because a repaved block would not be worth the disruption. When complete, this central block of Salem Street will feature a curbless, accessible design with brick pavers, street trees, decorative street lighting, catenary string lighting, and new street furniture; removable bollards will be installed to enhance pedestrian safety when the road is closed for special events; a new gathering space at the corner of Salem Street at Saunders Street will be constructed that complements the pedestrian-oriented streetscape improvements.
The Saunders Gathering Space is the piece to watch. It is the first purpose-built downtown gathering space Apex has had, and it will change how events like PeakFest and the Olde Fashioned Fourth of July feel. For its 45th year on May 2, PeakFest ran with a new footprint centered on Hunter Street and the Town Hall Campus, drawing more than 45,000 attendees, having grown from a small arts-and-crafts gathering in a church parking lot in 1980 to Apex's signature community event. Once the streetscape reopens, expect the festival to move back and expect the new gathering space to become the default overflow venue rather than the current fallback of the Town Hall lawn.
The residents getting the best of downtown this year are the ones planning around both closures rather than around one. That approach carries into the fall reopening too, because the Peakway is still out.
A small note on the neighborhood angle
Downtown health matters for Montvale for a reason that is easy to miss: the character of the six blocks around Salem Street is one of the things that makes the western edge of Apex feel different from a generic Triangle suburb. The 132 downtown businesses in that district are what a lot of buyers actually mean when they say they want to be near downtown Apex. Supporting them through the last stretch of construction, and showing up in force in October, is how residents keep that character intact. If you want the longer view on what makes this pocket of Apex distinct, the Montvale neighborhood page has the context.
If you are thinking about what your own home is worth as downtown finishes its reset, Karen Coe Realty Group tracks Apex block by block. Request Your Home Valuation when you are ready to see how the fall market is pricing your street.
