The Buggy Factory Keeps Closing. Here's What's Actually Keeping Downtown Carthage Running.

Walk the courthouse square this month and you'll pass a two-story brick building with a for-sale sign that wasn't there a year ago, sitting empty for the second time in two years. It's the old Tyson and Jones Buggy building at 106 S. Ray Street, whose recent history includes openings and closures.

Meanwhile, three blocks over, Time Out Sports Grill has hosted karaoke every Friday night for years.

The Buggy Factory's history is one part of downtown Carthage's story; recurring events and local businesses are another.

The Buggy Factory's recent history

For decades before 2023, the old buggy factory sat empty. It's the building that gave Carthage its old nickname, "buggy town," from the era when Tyson and Jones turned out roughly 3,000 horse-drawn carriages a year at its 1890 peak, before the last one rolled out in 1925. After that, the building mostly just sat there, boarded up and waiting.

In June 2023, Southern Pines Brewing Co. broke ground on a plan to turn the building into a restaurant, taproom, and small brewery. Company founder Micah Niebauer and Carthage's mayor stood in front of a crowd that day, and the mayor called it a project that would really help the town's downtown revitalization. The Buggy Factory opened the following May with a speakeasy bar, an outdoor performance courtyard, and a menu built around Detroit-style pizza.

By December 2024, the restaurant had reopened with a beer-first menu of smash burgers and fried chicken sandwiches. Niebauer told a local outlet the earlier concept had been too formal and just didn't resonate with the community.

Southern Pines Brewing Co. closed the Carthage location for good on December 31, 2025, alongside its remaining Southern Pines taproom, after First Citizens Bank sued the company over more than $2 million in loans tied to the Carthage renovation and a new Fayetteville taproom. As of an April 2026 report, the building sits vacant again, expected to go up for sale, with no listing date set.

Here's the timeline in one place:

The building saw two restaurant concepts in under two years. Other downtown businesses and recurring events continued during the same period.

Downtown's recurring activities

Time Out Sports Grill on Monroe Street has a regular weekly schedule. Monday nights are Bingo Bash at 7 p.m. Thursdays bring Music Bingo, also at 7, run by a local DJ outfit called Dye Entertainment. Fridays shift into a karaoke and dance party that runs from 8 p.m. until midnight. Once a month, the Cruzin 4 Kidz Car Club of Moore County turns the parking lot into a cruise-in open to any car, truck, or motorcycle owner who wants to show up and talk shop.

These events continued during the period when the Buggy Factory opened, changed its menu, and closed.

The Jive Hive is a small grassroots venue built around local and regional acts in a quieter setting. Buggy Town Coffee has been open long enough that the Buggy Factory itself sourced ingredients from it during its time in operation. And if you're the kind of household that plans a Saturday around something a little unusual, the Kitten Around Cat Lounge on Courthouse Square lets you get a coffee alongside a room full of resident cats, open a few afternoons a week.

Each offers a different kind of local gathering place.

Two markets, two different days

Downtown's food and produce scene splits across two separate markets that don't compete so much as cover different needs. The Carthage Farmers Market sets up downtown on Fridays, seasonal, walkable from the square. The Moore County Farmers Market runs on Thursdays year round at the Armory Sports Complex, a few minutes away, for the weeks when the downtown market isn't running.

If you're new to the rhythm here, that's the practical version: Thursday for the year-round option, Friday for the seasonal downtown one when it's in season.

The courthouse and county offices

The Historic Moore County Courthouse, a three-story Indiana limestone building completed in 1923 and designed by architect Christopher Gadsden Sayre, sits on the traffic island at the center of downtown. Moore County itself dates to 1784, carved out of Cumberland County and named for Alfred Moore, a Revolutionary War veteran who went on to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

The county has kept building around it. A newer courthouse addition opened in 2024 as part of a roughly $53 million expansion connected to the existing 47,000-square-foot courts facility. County offices a block away contribute to foot traffic around the square. The courthouse expansion and the restaurant's two concepts are both part of downtown's recent history.

The local picture also includes new neighborhoods a short drive out and a mixed-use development approved in the old Little River golf community that could eventually push the town's population past 5,000.

The annual Buggy Festival

Carthage's Buggy Festival takes place each May on Mother's Day weekend. Now in its 37th year, it draws more than 150 craft and food vendors, a free kids' zone, and live bands from as far away as Myrtle Beach and Fayetteville. The festival celebrates the Tyson and Jones carriage factory's history.

The former factory building remains a separate part of the town's story.

If you're weighing whether a place like Carthage fits the way you want to live, its weekly events, seasonal markets, and annual festival are part of the local rhythm.

If you'd like to talk through what that kind of steady, small-town rhythm means for buying or selling in Moore County, Jamie McDevitt would love to connect.