By Yvonne Zusel, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Chef Pat Pascarella is growing his metro empire Italian restaurant empire with a third location of Grana, set to open by the end of the year.

The restaurant will be part of the Southern Post mixed-use development off Highway 9 in Roswell, just two blocks along Canton Street.

The 6,160-square-foot interior space with a 2,600-square-foot patio on the second floor of Southern Post will be the largest for Grana, which has an existing location in Piedmont Heights and a forthcoming location in Dunwoody.

The Southern Post eatery will have approximately 275 seats, including a large bar area. The new restaurant will echo the original, with a menu of Neapolitan-style pizza and other dishes, and rustic design including a divider separating the main dining room from the bar and hanging image of Italian actress Sophia Loren.

Grana will join several previously announced food and beverage concepts at Southern Post, including Azotea Cantina, Silla Del Toro, Belux Coffee and DaVinci’s Donuts. Four to five more food and beverage concepts are set to be announced in the coming months.

Pascarella, who also owns The White Bull in Decatur, Bastone on the Westside and Alici in Midtown under his Porchetta Restaurants hospitality group, said Southern Post’s location and the greenery underneath Grana’s planned covered patio made the third location appealing to him.

“I promised my wife that I would put a Grana in Roswell one day because we love the city so much,” he said in a prepared statement. “In my opinion, our Grana location there will be the prettiest one to date.”

Southern Post, from Virginia-based real estate investment trust Armada Hoffler, is a 4.27-acre mixed-use development that was previously home to Roswell Plaza. In addition to restaurants, the project will also feature 128 apartments, 90,000 square feet of loft-style, open-concept offices, 40,000 square feet of retail space and nine townhomes.

The project was first announced in 2019. S.J. Collins Enterprises, which originally partnered with Armada Hoffler for the development, left the project in 2021. That firm purchased the land for the project from the Roswell Downtown Development Authority in 2019 for $5 million. S.J. Collins and Armada Hoffler previously teamed up for the west Midtown development, The Interlock.

This article was originally posted in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.