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Creative 'NoMo': Hip, new businesses, residents revitalize corridor in upper ...

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Take Johnny Diamond, a 31-year-old eating lunch recently at the bar of the Tattooed Moose on Morrison Drive.

Diamond, a Charleston native, moved to the nearby Wagener Terrace neighborhood about a year ago. He and his buddies are now loyal to the restaurants that are close by. "We've migrated," he said. "We all used to live farther downtown."

Parking and less traffic are definite advantages, but so is informal membership in a club of "early adopters."

"It still feels like a neighborhood, but it's downtown," Diamond said. "It's kind of the last little secret left here."

A short distance away on Morrison Drive, another restaurant is taking shape in the Ole Charleston Forge building. Revolutionary Eating Ventures plans to open the 99-seat Royal American there.

It will be the second restaurant in the neighborhood for the company, which opened Taco Boy on Huger Street in 2009.

REV co-owner Karalee Nielsen said people thought it was a crazy idea to put Taco Boy in a such a fringe area.

Source: Charleston Post Courier