What’s New at The Village Elk Grove and What’s Open Now

For close to a decade, the 20 acres at Elk Grove Boulevard and Big Horn have been the running joke of the neighborhood. Fenced dirt. Occasional grading. Renderings that never seemed to match the ground. In the summer of 2026, the joke stopped. Doors are open, ribbon cuttings are stacking up week over week, and the map of where residents drive for a decent dinner has quietly redrawn itself.

If you already live here, you do not need a pitch about Elk Grove's growth. You need to know which places you can actually walk into this weekend, which ones are three weeks out, and whether it is worth the drive across town for any of them. That is what this is.

The doors that have opened at The Village

The Village is an open-air lifestyle center built on the southeast corner of Elk Grove and Big Horn. Developers said the project was on track to complete construction by the end of 2026, a year after breaking ground, and the first tenants started swinging their doors open in late spring.

Yard House celebrated its grand opening on June 22, becoming among the first businesses to open at The Village, with the Elk Grove Chamber of Commerce holding a ribbon cutting the same day. Chick-fil-A, SchoolsFirst Credit Union and Mendocino Farms have also recently opened at the center, with Mendocino Farms also celebrating its grand opening June 22.

Two details worth flagging for locals. First, the Yard House here is not a copy-paste of the Downtown Sacramento, Roseville, or Folsom locations. The restaurant is debuting a new beer garden concept for the chain, with an outdoor space featuring synthetic turf, picnic-style seating and a full outdoor bar, serving as the pilot design for future Yard House locations. If you have been to the Folsom one, this will not feel identical. Second, general manager Matt Russell told the Elk Grove Citizen that the city's "up-and-coming DNA" drove the decision to bring the pilot format here rather than to a more established suburb, which is a small tell about how the chain is reading the trade area.

Philz Coffee celebrated the grand opening of its new store at 8170 Elk Grove Blvd, Suite 100 at 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday, July 8, marking the California-founded coffee brand's 83rd location. The interior is worth a look on its own: the new Elk Grove location features seating for 27 guests and a custom three-panel mural by Oakland-based artist Alexandra Bowman, known for her figurative illustrations and vibrant use of Philz's signature colors.

What is still coming, and when to stop asking

If the tenants above are the first wave, the second wave is what will decide whether The Village becomes a destination or another strip. In November, Pappas Investments, the company overseeing The Village project, released an online brochure indicating that Barnes & Noble would be joining the lineup of incoming tenants. The Village Shopping Center is expected to bring 110,000 square feet of new retail, dining and grocery space to the area, with previously announced businesses including Whole Foods as the anchor tenant, along with Mendocino Farms, Yard House, Shake Shack, Philz Coffee and an additional Chick-fil-A location.

The names still pending as of this writing:

• Whole Foods as the grocery anchor
• Shake Shack
• Barnes & Noble

According to a news release from a contractor on the project, the shopping center is expected to open sometime this year. Translation for residents: if you keep driving to the Sacramento Whole Foods on Arden or the one on Fair Oaks, you will not have to for much longer, but the exact date is still moving.

The Chick-fil-A cluster, briefly explained

Elk Grove now has two Chick-fil-A locations run by the same owner-operator. A new Chick-fil-A restaurant began serving the Elk Grove community at its newest location on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026, with Kyle Atwater selected as the local Owner-Operator of Chick-fil-A Elk Grove Blvd & Wymark. Atwater was selected as the local Owner-Operator of Chick-fil-A Elk Grove Marketplace in 2023, so both locations run out of the same operator's playbook. If you have a preference for how one of them handles catering or curbside, the other should behave the same way. The Wymark location is located at 8140 Elk Grove Blvd. and serves Guests Monday through Thursday from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Friday through Saturday from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Beyond The Village: where else the map is shifting

Focusing only on The Village misses what is actually the more interesting move for residents on the west side and along the Highway 99 corridor. The rest of town is getting its own second wave.

Laguna Boulevard and Bruceville Road. Victoria's Secret and PINK marked its grand opening in November 2025, taking over the former Kirkland's space at the Laguna Crossroads shopping center.

Laguna 99 Plaza. Planet Fitness is coming soon to Laguna 99 Plaza, taking over the former California Backyard space and offering a more convenient location for members who live in Elk Grove. An exact opening date has not been posted publicly, though pre-sale membership is live.

The Ridge at Elk Grove Boulevard and Bruceville. Marshalls, an off-price retailer in the T.J. Maxx and HomeGoods family, was announced as a future tenant at the southeast corner of the shopping center and will occupy a 20,000-square-foot space near Nordstrom Rack and Club Studio gym. The Ridge is anchored by Costco and Amazon Fresh and is home to businesses including Sephora, In-N-Out, Buffalo Wild Wings, Olive Garden and Crumbl.

Elk Grove Commons. Dapper Doughnut, a specialty doughnut chain, is joining the center.

Calvine Pointe. Bruster's Real Ice Cream has been added to leasing materials, per the Sacramento Business Journal.

The coffee scene in particular has quietly gotten interesting. Beyond Philz at The Village, two independent-leaning brands are landing this year: Haute Coffee, a Florida-based operation built around Yemeni and Ethiopian single-origin roasts, and Em Coffee House, a San Diego-based Vietnamese coffee shop specializing in phin-brewed coffee and traditional and modern Vietnamese coffee drinks. For a city where the coffee conversation used to end at Starbucks and Dutch Bros, that is a meaningful shift in what a Saturday morning can look like.

The one restaurant most locals should know by name

If you read only one sentence of this and remember one name, make it Interlude Kitchen & Bar. It is not a chain, and it is not a soft opening for a concept proven elsewhere. Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen was among the city leaders who welcomed the opening, noting the restaurant is owned by Elk Grove natives Allen Kou and Won Trinh, and highlighted Interlude Kitchen & Bar as a recipient of the city's breweries, restaurants and wineries program, known as the BReW program.

"The BReW program is designed to support businesses that bring elevated culinary concepts to Elk Grove, strengthen our local economy and enhance our community's sense of place," Singh-Allen wrote. "Interlude is a perfect example of that vision in action."

The menu falls into the contemporary American category, with wood-grilled entrees, handcrafted pastas, and a curated wine and cocktail list. What matters for a resident deciding where to book an anniversary dinner is that this is the rare Elk Grove opening where the operators are from here, betting on here.

Reading the pattern

Pull back from the individual tenants and a shape appears. Ten years ago, retail center of gravity in Elk Grove sat firmly along Laguna Boulevard, with a smaller cluster around Elk Grove Marketplace to the east. The 2026 openings do not just add to those centers. They anchor a new one at Elk Grove and Big Horn.

Consider the sequence. Chick-fil-A opens a second location on Elk Grove Boulevard rather than a new corridor. Yard House chooses The Village for its beer-garden pilot instead of any of its three existing Sacramento-area rooftops. Philz picks The Village for its 83rd store. Whole Foods, Shake Shack, and Barnes & Noble are all pointed at the same 20 acres. Meanwhile, the Laguna corridor is filling in gaps with Planet Fitness and Marshalls, not landing new anchors.

That has practical consequences for daily life:

• Grocery routing. Once Whole Foods opens, west-side residents currently driving to Arden or Roseville will have a closer option, but east-side residents already loyal to Nugget or the Elk Grove Costco will need to weigh whether the trip is worth it.
• Weekend evenings. The Village is being built with sit-down dining that keeps kitchen hours later than most existing Elk Grove centers. For anyone who has left a restaurant elsewhere in town because the kitchen closed at 9, that changes.
• Local ownership. Interlude aside, most of the marquee openings are chains. The counterweight is quiet but real: the city's BReW program and small business loan program are pushing homegrown operators into the same trade area.

A short list for your next free Saturday

If you want a working itinerary from the research above, without any driving beyond Elk Grove city limits:

1. Morning coffee at Philz on Elk Grove Blvd, or Em Coffee House if you want a phin-brewed alternative.
2. Errands at The Ridge, checking whether Marshalls has opened next to Nordstrom Rack.
3. Lunch at Mendocino Farms in The Village.
4. Dinner and a beer garden seat at Yard House, or book Interlude Kitchen & Bar if the occasion warrants it.

That itinerary did not exist in Elk Grove in 2024. It barely existed in 2025. It exists now.

When retail activity is telling you something about your home

The reason a real estate practice pays attention to which chains sign leases and which independents get BReW grants is straightforward. National operators run trade-area analyses before they commit to a location. When Yard House selects Elk Grove for a pilot format, when Philz picks it for store 83, when Whole Foods lines up as an anchor, those are three separate companies telling their shareholders that this specific corner of the region is worth a multi-year bet. Homeowners who already live here are, in effect, holding the same bet.

If you have been thinking about what your Elk Grove home is worth in a market where the trade area itself is being repriced by retail, Valley to Valley Realty can walk you through what recent comparable sales, current inventory, and financing conditions say about your specific block. Get Your Home Valuation when you are ready to see the numbers behind the neighborhood you are already living in.