Makers Union Signs a Lease at the Diamond District, Its First Restaurant Outside D.C.

The Diamond District’s retail lineup is starting to fill in. Reston-based Thompson Restaurants has signed a lease for its Makers Union pub concept at 1781 Encore Ave, the development’s first planned retail building, according to reporting from Richmond BizSense’s Mike Platania and RVAHub’s Trevor Dickerson. It will be the seventh Makers Union location and the first one outside the D.C. area.

What’s Actually Signed

Makers Union is taking roughly 4,000 square feet in what Diamond District Partners calls the Gateway Retail Building, right next to the entrance of CarMax Park. It’s one of two anchor spaces in a 20,000-square-foot building; the other end is going to EAT Restaurant Partners for a sports bar, signed back in May. About 10,800 square feet in the building is still available. DDP expects to break ground in the first quarter of 2027, with buildout running roughly 16 months after that – so realistically this is a 2028 opening, not a 2027 one.

“Richmond, for us, checks every box,” said Thompson Restaurants COO Alex Berentzen, whose company briefly had a presence in the Richmond market before, running a Short Pump location of its Matchbox pizzeria concept from 2016 to 2020. Berentzen also told BizSense the company is close to signing a second Richmond lease for its Southern concept, Milk & Honey, and is looking for a bakery/cafe partner in the city as well.

What’s Already Committed at the Diamond District

This is the third tenant DDP has signed in 2026: law firm Hirschler committed to roughly 50,000 square feet in March to anchor the development’s office building, and EAT’s sports bar signed in May. Construction has also started on the district’s first apartment building, targeted for completion in early 2028. None of this is happening in a vacuum. The City of Richmond’s own project page describes the full Diamond District as a 67.57-acre redevelopment the City is pursuing jointly with VCU, and the site has also been tied up in litigation – our earlier post on the Flying Squirrels’ lawsuit over the Diamond District covers that background if you want it.

What It Means for North Side Buyers and Renters

A law firm anchor, two restaurant leases and an apartment building under construction in the same year is a real signal, not a rumor: retail brokers and a national restaurant group are betting people will actually be around the ballpark outside of game nights. For North Side and the streets closer to the Museum District along the Boulevard corridor, that typically shows up first as more rental demand and slightly longer waits at the handful of existing restaurants nearby, well before it shows up in resale prices. It’s also the same pattern we’ve tracked a few miles away in Scott’s Addition, where our coverage of that neighborhood’s restaurant buildout found the same thing: leasing activity is the leading indicator, not the home value itself.

If you’re weighing whether to buy near a project that’s still mostly rendering and construction fencing, that’s a legitimate hesitation – none of this is open yet, and the Gateway building alone is roughly two years from opening. Browse what’s actually listed near the ballpark right now on our active listings page rather than pricing in a restaurant that hasn’t broken ground.

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