The former VFW hall on Montgomery Road closed years ago, and the storefront that once housed Revolution Rotisserie has been dark since it closed in December 2024.
Both buildings are gaining new uses within the same year.
The former Revolution Rotisserie space at 6063 Montgomery Road became ZIQR Progressive Indian Restaurant, which held its grand opening in January. The old VFW hall at 6112 Montgomery Road is becoming a three-level restaurant from Agave & Rye, complete with a basement bourbon speakeasy, and the company announced the project this week with an early September opening target. Two vacant buildings are gaining new uses in the same calendar year, as other redevelopment continues along the corridor.
The Former VFW Hall's Redevelopment
The Pleasant Ridge Development Corporation, a volunteer-run nonprofit focused on the business district, had already identified 6112 Montgomery Road for redevelopment before Agave & Rye ever announced a name. Its own project list describes the site simply as a redevelopment of the former VFW hall into a restaurant space. That listing predates this week's announcement. The building wasn't sitting there waiting for a developer to notice it. It was already in the pipeline.
Agave & Rye's version of the space, according to its own announcement, will include an open kitchen, a wraparound bar, a front patio, upstairs dining for larger groups, and a basement speakeasy with a curved bar, a private tasting lounge, and what the company calls a rack room stocked with bourbon and tequila. The chain started in Covington in 2018 and has grown to 18 locations across five states, which makes this the rare case of a hometown concept returning to open a flagship-scale build in a neighborhood a few miles from where it started.
The Corridor Already Has a Proof of Concept
None of this is Pleasant Ridge's first attempt at filling a dead storefront on this stretch of road. A few doors from the VFW hall, 6099 Montgomery Road sat as a long-vacant commercial property before the PRDC redeveloped it into what's now home to Goodfellas Pizza, Nine Giant, Hello Honey, and Fermentorium, four businesses sharing one building that used to hold nothing.
The PRDC lists the 6099 Montgomery Road redevelopment and the planned redevelopment of 6112 Montgomery Road among its projects.
The PRDC also reports broader investment and planning activity across the corridor. It has secured more than $2.4 million in grants, including a $75,000 grant from the City of Cincinnati in 2025 specifically to update the Pleasant Ridge Business District Urban Design plan, guiding what the organization describes as tens of millions of dollars in redevelopment across the corridor.
Five Addresses, Three Stages
| Address | What Was There | What's There Now (or Coming) | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6099 Montgomery Rd | Long-vacant commercial building | Goodfellas Pizza, Nine Giant, Hello Honey, Fermentorium | Open |
| 6063 Montgomery Rd | Revolution Rotisserie (closed Dec. 2024) | ZIQR Progressive Indian Restaurant | Open since January |
| 6112 Montgomery Rd | Former VFW Hall | Agave & Rye, 3-level restaurant with basement speakeasy | Targeting early September |
| 6100 Montgomery Rd | Corner property | Redevelopment plans | Early stages, per PRDC |
| 6114 Montgomery Rd | Vacant, blighted property | Planned mixed-use building | Active planning, per PRDC |
Two of these are done. One is weeks out. Two more are still just plans on paper, which is worth sitting with for a second. Montgomery Road isn't fully transformed. It's roughly half transformed, on a schedule the PRDC set years before most residents noticed anything changing.
What's Actually Feeding the Foot Traffic
A restaurant corridor needs people walking to it, and that part of the equation changed too. The Ridge, a mixed-use project at the Montgomery and Lester intersection, added 82 to 83 new residential units along with roughly 13,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space. Pre-leasing began in March 2025, with the first residents moving in as early as that summer, so the building has had a year or more to fill up. Reported costs vary depending on the source. Local news coverage of the apartment build put the figure around $20 million, the project architect's own account lists it closer to $18 million, and the PRDC's tally for the full mixed-use project puts it above $30 million, which suggests the higher number accounts for more than just construction costs. Whatever the true figure, the effect is the same: several dozen new households now live within a block of a restaurant row that didn't exist for them a few years ago.
That's the part of this story that's easy to miss if you're only counting new restaurant openings. The apartment building and the business district investment happened in parallel; by the time ZIQR opened and Agave & Rye was scheduled to open, there were already more people living close enough to walk there.
What Ziqr Actually Feels Like Seven Months In
For residents who haven't made it to ZIQR yet, it's worth knowing what it replaced isn't really what it feels like now. Where Revolution Rotisserie left a dark storefront, ZIQR built out a 5,160-square-foot restaurant and bar. Regulars have pointed to the samosa sampler, served with four different chutneys, and the Kerala fried chicken as the dishes worth ordering, along with cocktails like the Manali Kream, a spiced rum drink built around coconut and lychee. It's a different kind of anchor than Pleasant Ridge has had before on this block, closer to a destination than a neighborhood spot, and it's been open long enough now that the early buzz has settled into something more like a regular rotation for people nearby.
What This Doesn't Change
None of this displaces what's already been working in Pleasant Ridge for decades. Gas Light Cafe, the burger-and-beer bar at 6104 Montgomery Road that took over the old Pleasant Luncheonette space back in 1989, is still packing in regulars for Golden Tee and cold drafts most nights of the week. The new additions are filling gaps, not replacing an old guard that residents already trust. That distinction matters for anyone wondering whether Montgomery Road is becoming a different neighborhood or just a fuller version of the one that was already there. It's the second one.
The honest read on Montgomery Road right now is that it's mid-project. Two long-dead buildings are open or about to be. Two more are still just acquisitions with plans attached. The nearby apartments have had residents for a year or more. The former VFW hall is slated for a new use, with Agave & Rye targeting an early September opening.
If you're curious what a corridor like this means for property values nearby, or you're weighing a move to be closer to it, the team at Janell Stuckwisch Group pays attention to these shifts as part of how we read a neighborhood's trajectory, not just its listing prices. Reach out anytime you want to talk through what's actually changing on the ground in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.