Five years after the opening of Pittsburgh Yards, the community-led job hub has officially received the tenth and final shipping container needed to complete the Container Courtyard.

Some courtyard businesses are already open. Others are in “different stages,” but all nine consumer-facing businesses should be open sometime in the spring, and accessible to patrons – especially those wandering off the Southside Beltline trail just steps away.

Here are the businesses currently open in the courtyard:

• Pink Pothos, a full-service plant shop
• Urban Grind Brew Box, a coffeehouse
• The Creamy Spot, a plant-based ice creamery
• Coffyn Pyes, a handheld savory pie spot
• Atlanta Bicycle Rentals

This spring, Ideal Barbers, Adam J’s Grilled Cheese, plant-based hot dog shop Carrot Dog and workforce development Black Box Cafe will join the mix. Two housing-related businesses, Fortas Homes and Atelier7, are also open on site.

A statement from Pittsburgh Yards said the location will be a space for residents, people passing through or those making it a destination to visit.

“People from within or outside the Pittsburgh neighborhood, one of the oldest historically Black communities in Metro Atlanta with a rich and meaningful history, are welcome to explore what Pittsburgh Yards and its Container Courtyard has to offer throughout the opening of each business,” the statement said.

The Container Courtyards are intended to support businesses that “need to have face time,” unlike any of the dozens of entrepreneurs based out of tiny office spaces in the Nia Building. But building out a courtyard of locally-owned businesses inside low-cost shipping containers wasn’t easy.

“We spent pretty much five years on the Container Courtyard, but there were things shifting,” Annie E. Casey Foundation senior associate Chantell Glenn said in a January interview.

Glenn said it was a “difficult lift” for several businesses to open their locations. Each business owner had to purchase their own container, a novel idea in Atlanta, but code restrictions meant it hard to reuse old containers.

Pittsburgh Yards originally wanted to repurpose older materials, but instead, business owners like Pink Pothos owner Lakeisha Jones had to buy a new container and have it shipped in. That added cost, plus shipping delays and export issues, “extended the growth period.”

So did finding business owners up to the task. Originally, the courtyard was meant to be an easier, lower-cost option to get a business off the ground. But market realities disrupted some expectations.

Glenn explained Pittsburgh Yards eventually landed on a new model: Spots like the Beltline Marketplace, which own shipping containers and lease them to entrepreneurs, will be the incubator. The Container Courtyard will offer an option for businesses with a little more stability.

These are business owners that have been in business,” Glenn said. “Our coffee shop, they’ve been in business 16 years, so they’re more mature, but it was still a difficult lift for them.”

But the businesses were eventually able to work out the issues and build out their not-so-brick-and-mortar locations. Now some of them are open for business, and the rest are soon to follow.

Currently, each business runs on different hours; Pittsburgh Yards recommends checking each spot’s social media accounts to check when they are open.

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