"We know Rock Hill deserved more than this, and it's never easy to say goodbye." That was Middle James Brewing Co. on Instagram in September 2025, as quoted by The Herald. The brewery had been the anchor tenant at The Power House, and with that post it became the latest business to leave the old city power plant on Technology Center Way.
The building is busy again a year later, with very different tenants. It no longer runs as a food hall of separate stalls behind a brewery. Its ground floor is now a craft beer pub, two coffee shops, a martial arts gym and a taco counter that hasn't opened yet. Two of those operators also handle bookings for the building's event lawn and its historic trestle space. The Power House fills up starting with the morning coffee crowd, and the people at the espresso machine now help decide what happens on the lawn at night.
The first plan was a destination
The building has a longer history than its current tenants. The Power House was Rock Hill's city power plant, built in 1930 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It sits between Stewart and Ebenezer avenues and West White Street, in the stretch of University Center between Winthrop University and the Rock Hill Sports & Event Center. When the Charlotte-based developer The Sherbert Group took it on, the boilers and turbines inside hadn't run in 40 years, The Herald reported in February 2022.
That same 2022 announcement described the plan as a food hall and brewery. Middle James, which had opened in Pineville three years earlier, signed on as anchor. The food hall would bring in operators "known to deliver quality," Sherbert Group CEO Tara Sherbert told the paper, rather than startup restaurants.
The food hall opened in June 2023 with six vendors serving below Middle James, according to The Herald's opening coverage. The building also had a barbershop and 37 apartments.
The first lineup didn't last
By September 2025, none of the original restaurants were still there. A planned Epic Prime steakhouse never opened, and several other food businesses had come and gone, The Herald reported. At the time, only Peaceful Palate and the Power Play sports bar were still listed on the building's website. Middle James's Pineville and Waxhaw locations stayed open.
Here is the ground floor then and now:
| June 2023 opening | Fall 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Anchor | Middle James Brewing Co., operating above the food hall | No single anchor |
| Food and drink | Ms. Lillian's Kitchen, Flip Out Burger, Chilango Tacos Y Mas, Naroodle Chibi, The Local Scoop, Javesca Coffee Roasters | The Pour Market, Mug & Maple, Most Fly Coffee Co. |
| Other tenants | Bareknuckle Barbershop | Red Wolf Martial Arts |
| Coming soon | Epic Prime steakhouse, which never opened | Mariah's Taco Spot |
| How the ground floor is pitched | A food hall | "A neighborhood on your ground floor" for the apartments upstairs |
The Herald's 2025 list of original tenants names Gordo & Chuli Taqueria where the 2023 opening story names Chilango Tacos Y Mas. Neither one is in the building now.
The last row is where the change shows most. The Power House's own dining page now speaks to the people living upstairs: "Your building is your neighborhood." It calls the tenants "a curated set of local operators."
A pub opened first, with about 40 beers on hand each day
The Pour Market opened in November 2025, about two months after Middle James closed. Sharyn and Philip Knight own it. Sharyn has worked in restaurants for 22 years. She started as a server, hostess and bartender while taking pre-med classes in college, then chose the restaurant business over medical school. Philip has 30 years in the industry. He started as a dishwasher at 54th Street Bar and Grill in Kansas City, Missouri, and later earned a culinary arts degree from Johnson & Wales University, according to a Post and Courier profile from September 2026.
"On the beverage side, beer is king," Philip Knight told the Post and Courier, and about 40 varieties are available every day. On the food side, the paper lists Philly cheesesteaks, focaccia sandwiches and prosciutto and pesto flatbreads as customer favorites. The Pour Market took part in the 2026 YoCo Taste Trail Week with a limited three-course menu. It hosts a comedy night every month and regular live music, and some weekends it has held puppy adoption and cornhole events, since the space is pet-friendly.
So beer is back in the building that lost its brewery, now run by two owners with long restaurant careers who, the paper says, use customer feedback to add new menu items.
Then came the coffee shops
Spring 2026 brought the change that sets this building apart. The Post and Courier's coffee roundup counted several new coffee shops across York County in April and May. They included a Filipino-inspired shop at the Power House, which the paper called Most Dope Coffee. The building and the shop now use the name Most Fly Coffee Co., at 378 Technology Center Way. Its menu includes ube and pandan lattes, Vietnamese coffee, Filipino sweet tea, golden milk and cold brew, and the shop also serves as an artist space.
Mug & Maple opened in April 2026, a few steps away in the same building. Nate and Kate Kingsley, who are from New Hampshire, use New England maple syrup in their signature "OG Maple" coffee. They use locally sourced milk and no seed oils or artificial ingredients, according to The Johnsonian's October 2026 profile. Nate Kingsley worked at Espresso Dave's in college and had long planned to open his own shop. The building describes the café as having a ski-lodge feel and a 35-foot granite bar. Along with lattes, the menu has breakfast sandwiches, Italian sandwiches and pasta.
"I want you to immediately feel like we are friends," Kingsley told The Johnsonian.
The two shops cover different ground. Most Fly focuses on Filipino and Southeast Asian drinks, while Mug & Maple focuses on maple lattes and a full breakfast and lunch menu. Add The Pour Market's evening beer list, and the ground floor now runs from morning to late evening, with each counter covering a different part of the day.
The event spaces are booked through the counters
The Power House has two event spaces. The outdoor Event Lawn & Stage hosts concerts, festivals and community events. The Trestle Area is an indoor-outdoor space built around the original power-plant structure. Bookings, catering and drinks for both are handled by two tenants, Mug & Maple and The Pour Market, according to the building's dining and events page.
This is the biggest change from 2023, and it backs up everything above. When the building opened, it had a developer, a brewery anchor and a rotating group of stalls. Today the operators who open the doors in the morning also book the lawn and the trestle. For a resident planning a birthday party, a team gathering or a small private event in a National Register building, the first contact is a coffee shop or a pub, not a leasing office.
The rest of the ground floor follows the same pattern. Red Wolf Martial Arts, coached by Mike Mendoza and Wayne Martin, teaches Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and kids' classes in the building. Mariah's Taco Spot is listed as coming soon, and the building points readers to the taco spot's own site for opening news.
The same pattern at The Thread
Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii opened at The Thread, in the Lowenstein Building at 220 W. White St., Suite 122, during the same spring wave. The York County Chamber held its ribbon-cutting on June 10, 2026. Between the two old mill-era buildings, University Center gained three coffee counters in one spring. The Power House's website advertises "2 Minutes to Downtown Rock Hill," which puts all three close to Old Town as the holiday season starts.
What's on the Old Town calendar
The holiday dates for the next six weeks are already set:
- Nov. 1 through Dec. 2: ChristmasVille's Gingerbread House Contest, LEGO Build Contest and Cardboard Ornament Contest.
- Nov. 29 through Dec. 6: Taste of ChristmasVille. Old Town restaurants offer seasonal specials during their regular hours, and diners collect passport stamps toward a giveaway. Participating restaurants and passport pickup spots hadn't been announced on the event listing yet.
- Dec. 3 through Dec. 6: ChristmasVille in Old Town Rock Hill, with nearly 70 events, including horse-drawn carriage rides, historic tours, music and an opening ceremony with Santa.
- Friday, Dec. 4, 6:30 p.m.: The Light the Night Christmas Parade.
The Taste of ChristmasVille restaurant list is still open, so check whether The Pour Market, Mug & Maple or Most Fly Coffee Co. join. Until then, the Power House's regular schedule stands: coffee from two shops in the morning and The Pour Market's beer list and monthly comedy night in the evening.
The Power House shows what happens when an old industrial building finds tenants who suit its location, and that's the kind of question we work on with owners and builders across York County: what a ground floor can support, what approvals it needs, and how to show it to tenants and buyers before it's finished. If you're planning an adaptive reuse or mixed-use project in the Rock Hill and Fort Mill area, PRL Consulting Group can help you plan it. Request a Market Valuation or Project Consultation.
