Walk down Salem Street this week and you'll see two things at once. On one side, sawhorses, pipe bollards, and the bare dirt where new American elm trees will eventually stand. On the other, a banner strung high over the road that reads "Downtown Apex is open for business," hung there because the town needed people to actually believe it. Both are true. The Salem Streetscape project has reshaped how downtown functions for eight months now, and the town still expects two-way traffic to return by October. That gives residents a fairly narrow window: this version of downtown, with its one-way southbound stretch and its scattered storefronts, is close to over.
The easy story here is "construction is annoying, shop local anyway." That's not wrong, but it undersells what's actually closing this week: a downtown business incentive most residents haven't heard of, and a construction timeline that's a lot closer to finished than the daily inconvenience of the one-way street would suggest.
The Heat Is Part of the Story Too
Shade along Salem Street is thin right now with the tree canopy stripped out for the streetscape work, and the corridor bakes by early afternoon this time of year. It's a small thing, but it's part of why some downtown regulars have been showing up earlier or later in the day instead of at midday. Foxtail Coffee opened a second Apex location this year at 1451 Richardson Road in Sweetwater Town Center, a mile from its original downtown shop, which gives anyone avoiding the construction stretch at midmorning a reasonable alternative that isn't a chain. None of this means downtown is quiet. It means the smartest move for the next few weeks is planning around the heat and the one-way traffic rather than around them.
What's Actually Worth the Trip Right Now
The construction hasn't touched the food. Sidewalks on both sides of Salem Street have stayed open for the entire project, and the businesses along it are, for the most part, still doing exactly what they always did.
A short list worth working into a downtown morning or evening before the streets change back:
- Popovers Cafe, 219 N. Salem Street, run by Mustafa and Juliette Ozturk, opened this year with a menu built around sweet and savory popover pastries. Morning stop.
- Scratch Kitchen & Taproom, 225 N. Salem Street, still the busiest restaurant on the strip most nights, known for pimento cheese wontons and bao buns.
- Myra Cafe, 76 Hunter Street, for brunch and pastries. The Hunter Street address is a real advantage during the detour since you can reach it from the Town Hall side without ever touching the one-way section of Salem.
- Serafina Ristorante and Oaklyn Springs Brewery for dinner and a slower evening, both a short walk from the construction's noisiest stretch.
- Cocoon Gallery, where Cynthia Mollenkopf has sold work from a rotating roster of 70 to 80 artists since 2017, and Virtuoso Jewels, Larry Seiger's custom jewelry and goldsmith shop, both worth a browse if you want something that isn't a chain.
- FRESH. Local Ice Cream and Kilwins for the after-dinner walk, plus Salem Street Pub and The Provincial if you want to sit down longer.
If you're headed to the west side of town instead, Kaara Indian Restaurant opened this year at 2700 Stokesdale Avenue with two dining halls and a full bar, and Lime & Lemon Restaurant & Lounge added a premium Indian dinner concept plus a separate late-night lounge on Creekside Landing Drive.
The Deadline Most Residents Don't Know About
Downtown's business association has been running the Local Spot Passport Program since June 19, encouraging people to buy a to-go drink at a participating shop and stroll the designated outdoor social district while checking out other storefronts along the way. It ends on Labor Day, September 7. That's less than two weeks from now.
This isn't a minor seasonal promotion. It's the town's direct answer to a real problem. Anna's Pizzeria told WRAL earlier this year that construction had cost them somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of sales, forcing cuts to employee shifts. Alleyway Bookstore closed entirely, citing a 64 percent rent increase on top of the construction slowdown. Mollenkopf at Cocoon Gallery said she and her neighboring tenants expect their own rents to climb too, even as foot traffic has dropped. The passport program is a low-effort way to put a few more dollars into these storefronts before the summer's disruption fully gives way to fall.
Virtuoso Jewels owner Larry Seiger put his finger on what business owners actually wanted from the town during the roughest stretch of construction, back when the project paused for several weeks this spring over electrical design revisions:
"The main thing that I think most of the business owners are looking for is communication. So that when we do have a slowdown in construction and the guys aren't here, that we know more about what actually is the holdup, what's going, how long it's going to take."
Mayor Jacques Gilbert has said the pause didn't change the timeline. Despite the delay, the town still expects the project to wrap by October, which means the six-plus months of one-way traffic and construction noise are finally entering their last real stretch.
What the Finish Line Actually Looks Like
The visible progress backs up the town's timeline. Underground infrastructure and pavers on the east side of Salem Street were finished in mid-July, and crews have since shifted southbound traffic onto that new lane so they can start demolition and rebuilding on the west side. The town's project page also notes that a dry watermain was installed through the Salem and Chatham intersection ahead of a separate 2027 water project, a small detail that suggests the town is trying to avoid tearing the same stretch of road up twice.
When it's finished, the $4.7 million project adds a curbless, paver-covered surface, 19-foot decorative light poles with string lighting brackets, new benches and trash bins, and a dedicated gathering space at Saunders and Salem with a pergola. The Saunders Lot expansion, completed earlier and already in use, added 152 parking spaces, a 40 percent jump in downtown's parking capacity. Combined, these are meant to support the roughly 132 small businesses that currently make up downtown Apex.
None of that helps much if you're trying to get a table at Scratch Kitchen this week. But it does mean the disruption has a visible end point rather than an open-ended one, which is more than downtown business owners could say back in April.
Two Things Construction Hasn't Touched
Not everything downtown runs on the streetscape's schedule. The Apex Farmers Market, at 220 N. Salem Street, has continued through the entire project, and the Apex Sculpture Walk, an outdoor exhibit connecting the Town Hall Campus to Hunter Street Park, remains open for anyone who wants to download the Ottocast app and listen to artists narrate their own pieces along the route. Both are worth building a weekend around regardless of which side of the one-way street you park on.
Downtown Apex has looked like a construction zone for most of 2026, and it's easy to let that become the whole story. But the finish line is close enough now that the smarter move is timing your visits around it rather than avoiding downtown until the pavers are in. The Local Spot Passport Program closes on Labor Day. The elms won't have real shade for a couple of years. The businesses that have held on through a one-way street and a spring construction pause are still there, still open, and still worth the short walk from wherever you parked.
If you're the kind of person who pays attention to how a town like Apex changes block by block, that's exactly the kind of local read Neha Avasthi and the NATE team bring to every conversation about this part of the Triangle. Let's Start a Conversation.
