Parker & Otis, an eclectic hybrid restaurant and retail shop located on South Duke Street in downtown Durham’s Brightleaf District, announced in a Wednesday afternoon Instagram post that it will be moving down the road to the American Tobacco Campus.
Owner Jennings Brody opened the popular store—known for its sandwiches, coffee, kitchen kitsch, and friendly general-store-aesthetic—at its current 112 South Duke Street location in 2007. In November, the store will relocate to the 5,600-square-foot space previously occupied by Tyler’s Taproom, which closed in April of 2019.
Parker & Otis has been slowly building a relationship with the American Tobacco Campus: last year, the campus hosted a Parker & Otis paper-goods pop-up, which then evolved into a brick-and-mortar store that opened in January.
The character of the Brightleaf District is rapidly changing, over the past few years, with buildings changing hands and longstanding family-owned businesses relocating. In December of 2019, the Charlotte-based firm Asana Partners purchased the 140,000-square-foot Brightleaf Square warehouse space for $39 million. Four months later the firm purchased the neighboring Peabody Place building for $7 million. Until recently, that building housed Parker & Otis, Isley Hawkins Architecture, and Morgan Imports (Morgan Imports announced in August that it would shutter after 51 years in business).
A testament to Durham’s real estate boom, Peabody Place saw its value increase nearly tenfold in just one decade: In 1998 it was purchased for $580,000 and sold for $5.2 million in 2008. That same year, Parker & Otis moved in with a ten-year lease.
Representatives for the firm did not respond to INDY inquiries about the future of the space.
These days, updates coming from the local restaurant scene tend to involve closing doors and layoffs, so while the relocation announcement is bittersweet, it bodes well for the future of Parker & Otis.
The American Tobacco Campus recently announced expansion plans including a 14-story high-rise residential building that will include 350 multifamily units, and 90,000 square feet of “experiential retail.”
Parker & Otis did not return INDY calls requesting comments on the move.
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