If you have lived in Dormont for more than a couple of years, you already know the old rhythm of Potomac Avenue. Pizza and gyros after work, a coffee run on the way to the T, and a quiet daytime stretch where a few storefronts sat dark until the dinner crowd showed up.
That rhythm is about to break. Between September and mid-October, a single block of Potomac fills in the daytime gap it has been missing, and the borough's biggest street party lands on top of it. If you are staying home this fall instead of driving into the city, this is the stretch to pay attention to.
The Block Has Quietly Reorganized Itself
The thesis is simple. Potomac Avenue has been an evening street for a long time. The businesses that anchored it were open when you were off work, and closed when you were not. What has changed in the last few years is that the daytime side of the block has finally caught up, and the September opening next to Badamo's is the last big piece.
Walk the block from north to south and you can see the shift laid out in addresses:
| Address | Business | When it's open |
|---|---|---|
| 1426 Potomac Ave. | Moonlit Burgers | Wed–Sat evenings |
| 1431 Potomac Ave. | Preserving Record Shop | Seven days a week |
| 1509 Potomac Ave. | Badamo's Pizza | Evenings |
| Next to 1509 | Badamo's sandwich shop + groceria | Daytime, opening September 2026 |
| 1521 Potomac Ave. | Dad's Basement | Show nights, BYOB |
| 1607 Potomac Ave. | Potomac Station Coffeehouse | 7 a.m.–5 p.m., daily |
Five years ago you could walk this same stretch at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday and pass three closed doors in a row. That is not the block anymore.
What Badamo's Second Act Actually Solves
The most consequential opening of the fall is not a new concept parachuting in from somewhere else. It is Anthony Badamo opening a specialty sandwich shop and small Italian groceria in the storefront right next to his existing pizzeria at 1509 Potomac Ave., with a target of September 2026. Pittsburgh City Paper reported that the new shop will run six to eight specialty sandwiches alongside grocery items like fresh produce and take-and-bake pastas.
Read the business logic and it tells you something about the block. Hoodline framed the expansion as a way to catch daytime foot traffic and retail shoppers that an evening-focused pizza shop was leaving on the table. In other words, Badamo saw enough people on Potomac between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. to justify a second lease. That is a bet on the neighborhood, not just on the pizza brand.
For a resident, the practical effect is this. If you work from home in Dormont, the sandwich shop gives you a lunch option on the same block as your morning coffee, without needing to get in the car. If you have people coming for dinner and forgot the pasta, the groceria section is a walk away instead of a drive to Mount Lebanon.
The Places You Already Know, Reframed
The rest of the block is not new, but it reads differently once you see the daytime layer filling in.
Potomac Station Coffeehouse at 1607 Potomac Ave. sits directly across from the T station. The original owner, Kim Kunkel, signed the lease after literally sitting on the sidewalk across the street and watching the parade of commuters and pedestrians she was going to serve, in a 1,600-square-foot space that had housed George the Tailor for more than eighty years. It opens at 7 a.m. every day and stays open until 5 p.m., which is the schedule of a shop that expects both the morning T crowd and an afternoon work-from-home crowd.
Moonlit Burgers at 1426 Potomac Ave. is the opposite end of the day. The smash-burger operation runs Wednesday through Saturday, 4 to 9 p.m., in the former Fire Bar & Grill space. When co-owner Derek Stevens explained the Dormont pick to NEXTpittsburgh, he named population density, walkability, and public transit as the reasons — the same reasons a resident chose this borough in the first place.
Preserving Record Shop at 1431 Potomac Ave. is the daytime retail piece nobody talks about enough. It is the third location of the Preserving brand, open seven days a week, buying and selling vinyl, CDs, cassettes, and shirts. If you have a rainy Saturday and a teenager who has just discovered records, you have somewhere to send them on foot.
Dad's Basement at 1521 Potomac Ave. is the strangest and best piece of the block. The first floor is a collectibles store run by brothers Jake and Jared Berlin, buying and selling trading cards, autographs, and sports memorabilia. Downstairs is a 45-seat BYOB comedy and performance venue with a 1970s rec-room aesthetic. It exists because Dormont is small enough and close enough to the Hollywood Theater and the T to draw the kind of audience a bigger neighborhood would scatter.
The One Date to Circle: October 10
The block hits its peak on Saturday, October 10, 2026, when the Dormont Street & Music Festival closes Potomac Avenue from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. This is the 18th year of the festival. The borough runs it as a free community event, with three stages of local performers, a Kids Zone, and a Brew Garden, and recent attendance has approached 4,000 people.
For scale: Dormont's whole population fits into the festival crowd more than once. The event is one of the few days a year when the street's daytime and evening identities are literally the same identity, and where every business on the block described above is operating at once.
If you have not planned a festival day before, the shape of a good one looks like this:
- Start with coffee and a pastry at Potomac Station before 11 a.m., before the line gets long.
- Walk the vendor booths on Potomac while the crowd is still light.
- Pick a stage set to anchor the middle of the afternoon.
- Slide off the main drag for a proper meal at Badamo's or one of the newer arrivals like Pauly's, Arsenal Cider Tap House, Tal & Bert, or Mike & Tony's Gyros, all of which the borough's business district has added in the last few years.
- Come back for the last band and the Brew Garden after dinner.
If you run a small business or nonprofit and want a vending spot on Potomac that day, the borough's application deadline is August 31, so this is a now-or-never window rather than a later-in-September one.
Why Any of This Matters if You Already Live Here
The reason to notice the timing is not the festival itself. It is what the festival will look like on top of a block that finally has businesses on both sides of the clock.
A commercial district that only works from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. is a place you drive out of during the day. A district that has a coffee shop, a record store, a comedy venue, a sandwich counter, an Italian groceria, and a pizzeria on the same six-hundred-foot stretch is a place you plan your Saturday around without leaving the borough. That is the shift the fall of 2026 makes visible, and it is the reason houses within walking distance of Potomac Avenue have quietly become the kind of address people ask about by name.
You do not need to be in the market to feel the change. You just need to walk the block on an ordinary Wednesday in October and notice how few of the doors are closed.
If you are curious what that walkability is doing to home values on the streets that feed into Potomac, or you are thinking about listing in the next year and want a read on how the commercial district is affecting buyer interest on your block, Wendy Weaver knows this stretch of Dormont in detail. Reach out for an instant home valuation and a conversation about what your address is worth right now.
