With three lanes running in each direction, traffic zips up and down Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue, and for the most part there has been little reason to stop or slow down — especially in the 11-block stretch between Atlantic Avenue and Union Street.

For years, a KFC was the primary food outlet along the uninspiring corridor of vacant storefronts, flat-fix shops, greasy takeout joints, and Laundromats. The most popular drink option was a 40-ounce beer from one of the corner bodegas.

Now, changes are afoot. Several pubs and cafes have opened on Fourth Avenue recently. More are expected soon, as Park Slope’s inexorable wave of development, having exhausted the possibilities on Fifth Avenue, now is moving to Fourth. Other factors are contributing to the avenue’s potential makeover: Up and down the strip, new high-rise condominium buildings — the result of a recent zoning change — are under construction. Meanwhile, the looming prospect of the Atlantic Yards sports arena project suggests the trend of new food and drink venues is just getting started.

The most ambitious of the newcomers is Sheep Station (149 Fourth Ave., 718-857-4337), an Australian-themed pub with eight craft beers on tap, twice that many in bottles, and a small menu featuring exemplary meat pies ($6), fish and chips ($12), and lamb chops ($19). After opening in October, it has already attracted an enthusiastic crowd of neighborhood regulars.

Sheep Station’s chef and co-owner, Martine Lafond, has some experience in staking out new restaurant turf. She previously owned Smith Street Kitchen, which was one of the first outposts on Smith Street’s now bustling restaurant row. When she looks at Fourth Avenue, she sees a scene waiting to happen.

“There’ll be more — everybody’s looking,” she said recently. “Look around at what’s going up, building-wise, and it makes sense. So we wanted to get in on the ground floor. And the people love it. They’ve been waiting for something like this.”

It’s hard to argue with that, especially after stopping in for coffee at the Mule Café (67 Fourth Ave., 718-398-6700), which opened in the spring. On a recent evening, the place was filled with customers sipping high-end java and tapping on their laptops — an unusual sight for a street where coffee and technology have traditionally meant a cardboard cup of joe from the bodega and an air jack at one of the flat fix shops.

If Mule is refined and sedate, its next-door neighbor is almost the exact opposite. Cherry Tree (65 Fourth Ave., 718-399-1353), which opened in June, is essentially a party bar for 20-somethings, complete with beer bongs and a large sign, labeled a “public service announcement,” explaining that it’s “better to drink booze” than water.

“Yeah, we go nuts every once in a while,” bartender Aaron Feldstein said. “But that’s not the whole story. We’ve added food, and now that’s the big draw.” The offerings include a serviceable burger ($5) and surprisingly solid wood-fired pizza ($6), both cooked at an outdoor kitchen station in the bar’s back yard.

Things are a bit less raucous across the street at the 4th Avenue Pub (76 Fourth Ave., 718-643-2273), which opened in October.

Owner Jacob Rabinowitz — a veritable renaissance man who’s previously worked as an attorney, a political spokesman, and a restaurateur — is going for more of a connoisseur’s vibe, with two dozen beers on tap, cask ale on the way, and an impressive selection of bourbons and single-malt Scotches. He sees the avenue’s growth as a near certainty, and he points to a surprising precedent.

“People don’t remember this,” he said the other day, “but if you looked at Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan back in the 1980s, it was just like Fourth Avenue now: boarded-up storefronts, tire shops, numbers joints. And look what happened to it. That’s what’s going to happen here.”

Mr. Rabinowitz said he’d had his eye on the avenue for some time, but had a hard time finding a venue because landlords weren’t bothering to list their commercial spaces with local brokers. “A lot of the commercial spaces, I suspect, were being used for illegal residences, and some still are,” he said. “It’s just now that the landlords are realizing they can attract new commercial tenants here.”

The corridor’s changing fortunes have become so attractive that Maria’s Mexican Bistro (669 Union St., 718-638-2344), a 3-year-old restaurant on Union Street, just east of Fourth Avenue, recently knocked out a wall and made an L-shaped expansion into an adjoining building’s storefront — just to have a doorway opening onto the avenue.

“Fourth Avenue now is becoming a hot spot,” Maria’s owner, Nelson Nacipucha, said. “We’ve seen it change so fast. That’s why we decided to take the risk and see what we can do with this extra space.”