For a while, the building at 500 Furys Ferry Road was just the empty one. It had been a Bi-Lo, then a sprawling discount store called Final Cut, and when Final Cut announced it was closing in the summer of 2023, it left more than 50,000 square feet sitting dark in the middle of a stretch of road most Martinez residents only think about when they need gas, groceries, or a left turn onto Washington Road.
What moved into that box did not follow the usual script for a dead retail anchor. Nobody split it into three nail salons and a phone repair shop. A local family opened a hardware store with a garden center on one side. On the other side, a group of friends who had started playing pickleball together opened nine indoor courts with a full kitchen and bar. Both businesses are still running in 2026, and the way they ended up as neighbors says more about how this corridor actually works than any single opening does on its own.
The Deal That Filled the Box
Charles Cates had been looking for a spot to open a hardware store for years. His father, Doug Cates, co-owned the shopping center property along with T.R. Reddy, and when the space came open, the elder Cates made the call. Charles took on roughly 20,000 square feet, branding the store as a local alternative to the drive to Lowe's or Home Depot, with a garden center built around University of Georgia soil testing and plants suited to the region's sand-and-clay ground.
The other half of the building didn't come from a retail broker chasing a vacancy. It came from Troy Akers, an area physician who had picked up pickleball with his wife Nancy, and their friends Jason and Becky Kridner, who had been researching pickleball ventures on their own. The four of them pitched Cates directly.
"Troy and them approached us with the pickleball idea. We thought it was a great idea, just because it would drive so much foot traffic."
That's Cates, explaining why a hardware store agreed to share a parking lot with what Akers called the "TopGolf of pickleball." It's an unusual pairing. Most anchor boxes get filled by businesses that compete for the same customer at the same hour. This one got filled by two operators betting that a Tuesday morning trip for potting soil and a Friday night reservation for pickleball and drinks would feed the same lot without ever competing for the same visit.
The county agreed it was worth doing. The plan went to the Columbia County Planning Commission in December 2023 and the Board of Commissioners in January 2024, with architect Peter Slavovsky arguing the split would be "very healthy for not only the shopping center, but the neighborhood." The original target was a spring 2024 opening. It took closer to a year longer than that. Furys Ferry Hardware and DiNK'D Pickleball both held ribbon cuttings through the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce in February 2025, a joint event for two tenants of the same old grocery store, which is not something that happens for a typical strip-mall lease.
DiNK'D also opened smaller than first pitched. Akers and the Kridners had planned for ten courts inside the space; what's running today is nine, according to the facility's own court listings. It's a minor gap, but it's the kind of detail that shows the plan met a real building rather than staying a rendering.
The Corridor Filled In Around It
The hardware-and-pickleball pairing didn't happen in isolation. Local news had already been describing this stretch of Furys Ferry as a corridor on the move before either business opened its doors, pointing to a new coffee shop as part of the same wave. That shop was Rooted, and its operations manager at the time, John Needles, put it simply when asked about the timing: "We're just happy that we were invited to be a part of it."
Rooted has since grown into a small chain across the CSRA, with the Martinez location, Rooted Coffeehouse West Lake, sitting just off Furys Ferry on West Lake Commons Drive. Regulars still call it "Rooted on Furys Ferry" even though the mailing address says otherwise, which tells you how residents actually think about this stretch of road: not by street number, but by what's between the lights.
Here's what sits within about a mile of that old Bi-Lo box today:
| Business | Address | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Uprooted Vegan Cuisine | 359 Furys Ferry Rd | Plant-forward restaurant founded in 2020, sourcing from CSRA farms |
| Publix at Furys Ferry Plaza | 403 Furys Ferry Rd | Longtime grocery anchor at the north end of the corridor |
| Cucina 503 | 502 Furys Ferry Rd | Chef-driven Italian dinner spot led by chef Edward Mendoza, which converts to a casual lunch counter called LOCAL by day |
| Furys Ferry Hardware & Garden Center | 500 Furys Ferry Rd | Hardware and garden supply in the old Bi-Lo/Final Cut box |
| DiNK'D Pickleball | 500 Furys Ferry Rd, Ste 107 | Nine indoor courts with a kitchen and bar, sharing the same building |
| Rooted Coffeehouse West Lake | 1030 W Lake Commons Dr | Brunch-focused location of a five-shop CSRA coffee chain |
None of this was zoned as a town center. Publix has anchored its end of the corridor for years. Uprooted has been serving the CSRA since 2020. What changed is the middle of the stretch, where a vacant 50,000-square-foot box sat for over a year before turning into the two businesses that gave the whole corridor a reason to stop instead of pass through.
What an Actual Saturday Looks Like Now
Stack it together and the corridor reads less like a strip of separate errands and more like a loop. Coffee and brunch at Rooted's West Lake location in the morning. A walk through the garden center at Furys Ferry Hardware for the week's yard work, with staff who'll talk you through what actually survives Georgia clay. Lunch at LOCAL, Cucina 503's daytime version of itself, or a plant-based plate at Uprooted if that's more your speed. A pickleball reservation at DiNK'D in the evening, with food and drinks from its own kitchen so nobody has to leave the building between games.
That sequence didn't exist two years ago because half of it wasn't built yet. It exists now because a hardware store owner and a group of pickleball players made a bet on shared foot traffic, the county signed off, and the businesses that had already been circling the corridor, Rooted included, turned out to be right about where things were headed.
Watching corridors like this shift is part of how The Moss Group stays close to what's actually happening in Martinez and across the CSRA, not just what the listing photos show. If you're weighing a move within the area or wondering what a stretch like this does for the value of a home nearby, reach out to Lisa Moss for a conversation, or request a complimentary home valuation to see where your property stands today.
