Ask someone in Southaven where they're headed Friday night and the answer is often Silo Square. Ask the same question in Olive Branch and you'll hear Old Towne Parish. Both answers point to the same kind of place: a cluster of restaurants, bars, and small shops built around a promise that this is where the county actually gathers. The two spots sit less than fifteen minutes apart on opposite sides of the same county. And they got to that promise from completely opposite directions.
That's the part worth sitting with. DeSoto County never really had one old-fashioned downtown the way a lot of Southern towns do, a courthouse square that's been the default gathering spot for a century. Southaven and Olive Branch grew fast as Memphis pushed south, and for decades that growth was mostly residential subdivisions and highway retail, not the kind of walkable center that ends up on a postcard. Now two very different projects are trying to fill that gap at the same time, and neither one is quietly winning. They're just doing it in ways that couldn't be more different from each other.
The square built from a cornfield
Silo Square broke ground in 2018 on farmland south of Goodman Road, and the plan from day one was to build a town square from scratch rather than find one. The development's own materials describe more than 450 single-family homes and 250-plus loft units wrapped around a commercial core, with the idea that residents would walk to dinner instead of driving to it. It's now home to nearly 40 stores, restaurants, and offices, according to reporting when the neighborhood's newest grocery store opened.
That grocery store is the freshest proof the district is still filling in. South Point Grocery opened its Silo Square location at 6295 Front Street with a grand opening in November 2025, its second location after the original South Main store in downtown Memphis. It's an independently owned market with fresh produce, a coffee counter, and made-to-order pizza, which matters because Silo Square's whole pitch has been about giving residents daily errands within walking distance, not just a night out.
The rest of the lineup leans into that same live-work-play idea. Lucky Dog Music Hall & Bar hosts live country and classic rock most nights, with rollup barn doors that open onto patio seating facing the development's bell tower. Norton's brings a menswear shop stocked with brands like Fieldstone and Johnston & Murphy. Oasis Grooming Barbershop, run by owner Chris Newsom, handles cuts and beard trims a few doors down. And if you're looking for something you genuinely won't find anywhere else in the county, Mahjong Haus of Tiles and Style bills itself as the Mid-South's destination for American Mahjong, with lessons, leagues, and tournament play.
Silo Square also sits next to Snowden Grove Park and the BankPlus Amphitheater, connected by a pedestrian bridge built specifically so concertgoers could walk over rather than drive. That amphitheater is an 11,000-capacity venue that reopened after a 2023 renovation drawing its look from local agricultural buildings, the same instinct that gave Silo Square its name in the first place. The 2026 concert season kicked off during Southaven's Springfest on April 23 with Ashley McBryde and Alexandra Kay, and the calendar since then has included Jelly Roll, Everclear, Men at Work, and Luke Bryan. Two more shows remain on the books for fall: Hayley Williams on October 12 and Dru Hill, with Ginuwine, Next, and Troop, on October 24.
The square built from a cotton gin
Ten minutes east, Old Towne Parish took the opposite path. Instead of building new, it's rebuilding something that was already there. The anchor building started life as a general store in 1920, was converted into a cotton gin around 1930 after fire destroyed the original gin site, and ran as a working gin for more than four decades before becoming a small shopping center known for years as Cotton Gin Village Mall. Developer Cliff McLemore is the one who's spent the last several years turning it back into something people gather at on purpose, choosing the name Old Towne Parish because the building's shape reminded him of New Orleans architecture.
Part of what makes the project interesting is what it kept rather than what it added. Mississippi Ale House and Brew Pub, SideStreet Burgers, OB Pizza Co, and Pink's Coffee House were already neighborhood fixtures before the rebrand, and all of them stayed put. Pink's does double duty, turning into Pink's After Dark once the sun goes down for charcuterie boards, small plates, and wine. The newer additions built around that existing base: Ash's Irish Pub, owned by Justin Ash, brought shepherd's pie and a rotating beer list into the historic space. Mississippi Old Town Taco Co, a food truck run by husband-and-wife team Patricia and Alfonso Molina, opened its first brick-and-mortar location at 9200 Goodman Road after years of building a following one taco at a time. The Molinas also run Frutanas, an authentic Mexican dessert spot with ice creams and fruit bowls, just down the way.
Making room for all of it meant moving history. The statue of Chickasaw Chief Lush-Pun-Tubby, who owned much of the land that became Olive Branch before it was settled, had stood in the middle of the old parking lot for years. Developers relocated it to a more visible corner near Goodman Road and Pigeon Roost Road to free up space for roughly 85 new parking spots, a small but telling detail about how much the district is banking on foot traffic it doesn't have room for yet. Just across the way sits the Wesson House, built in 1875 by Olive Branch's first mayor, Ben Wesson, and now one of only three Dedicated Mississippi Landmarks in the county. Old Towne Parish isn't inventing a sense of history here. It's standing next to one that was already there and trying to give it a reason to stay busy after 5 p.m.
Southaven built a town square where there wasn't one. Olive Branch is trying to wake one back up.
Why the split matters more than the size
Neither square is bigger or more important than the other, and that's the point. They represent two honest answers to the same question: what do you do when your city grew up without a natural center? Southaven's answer was to design one from the ground up, complete with a bell tower, a farmers market planned for the future, and enough new residential density that the retail has captive customers before it even opens. Olive Branch's answer was to look at what it already had, a 1920s building with real bones and a story, and bet that authenticity would draw people back once the tenants were interesting enough.
Both bets are paying off, just in different currencies. Silo Square measures success in units filled and concert tickets sold next door. Old Towne Parish measures it in whether the Ale House still feels like the Ale House once a taco stand and an Irish pub move in around it. If you live closer to Getwell and Goodman, your Friday night gravitates toward one. If you're nearer Pigeon Roost and Highway 78, it pulls toward the other. Neither pull is stronger county-wide, and that's genuinely unusual for a county this size. Most places settle on one center. DeSoto County is running two experiments at once and letting residents vote with their car keys.
What's actually on the calendar this season
The activity isn't confined to just these two addresses. DeSoto County Dining Week ran its third annual event April 20 through 26 this year, pulling in 29 participating restaurants across Southaven, Olive Branch, Hernando, and Nesbit, according to DeSoto County Tourism director Alison Mitchell. New participants this year included Rocky's Italian Ristorante & Pizzeria and 1836 DeSoto BBQ & Grill, alongside longtime regulars like Coffee Central, whose owner Tina Tatum has taken part since the event's first year. It's a reminder that the county's dining scene has room to grow well beyond its two anchor districts, even if Silo Square and Old Towne Parish are where most of the new openings and the loudest nights currently land.
For the rest of 2026, the fall lineup at BankPlus Amphitheater gives Silo Square's side of the county two more reasons to fill up before winter, while Old Towne Parish keeps adding to its roster of small, independently owned spots one lease at a time. Neither district is finished. That's usually the case when a place is actually inventing its own center rather than borrowing someone else's.
DeSoto County's neighborhoods keep changing shape in small, specific ways like this, and it's worth knowing the difference between the two directions before you decide which Friday night is yours. If you're curious what any of this means for a specific street or subdivision nearby, the team at 2 Rivers Realty knows these pockets of DeSoto County block by block and is always glad to talk through what's changing and why.
