If you've driven Elk Grove Boulevard near Big Horn any time in the past two years, you've watched a dirt lot behind a chain-link fence slowly turn into something. First it was grading equipment. Then steel frames. Then, sometime around February, a drive-thru line that didn't seem to shrink no matter what time of day you passed.
That drive-thru belonged to Chick-fil-A, and it was the first sign that The Village, the 127,000-square-foot retail center going up at Elk Grove and Big Horn boulevards, was actually turning into a place you could visit rather than a rendering on a leasing brochure. What's easy to miss, unless you've been tracking it closely, is that the businesses everyone associates with this project, Whole Foods most of all, are among the last to open. The order things arrived in tells you more about how to use this place than any "coming soon" list does.
What You Can Already Walk Into
Chick-fil-A opened first, on February 19, 2026, at 8140 Elk Grove Blvd. It's the second location for local owner-operator Kyle Atwater, who opened his first Chick-fil-A at Elk Grove Marketplace back in 2023.
Then came a wave in June. Yard House and Mendocino Farms both celebrated grand openings on June 22, 2026, with the Elk Grove Chamber of Commerce doing a ribbon cutting for Yard House at 8190 Elk Grove Blvd. It's the chain's fourth location in the Sacramento region, joining spots in Downtown Sacramento, Roseville, and Folsom, and it's not a copy of those. The Elk Grove build debuted a new beer garden concept for the entire chain, with synthetic turf, picnic-style seating, and a full outdoor bar that the company says will become the template for future Yard House locations elsewhere. The general manager told the Elk Grove Citizen that the city's growth and what he called its "up-and-coming DNA" made it the right test market for the design.
By the time Yard House opened, Philz Coffee and SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union were already running too. So as of this summer, five tenants are open and doing business: Chick-fil-A, Philz Coffee, SchoolsFirst, Mendocino Farms, and Yard House. None of them are the reason The Village made the news in the first place.
Why the Anchor Came Last
Whole Foods opens September 16, 2026, at 9 a.m., at 8100 Elk Grove Blvd. It's the retailer's first Elk Grove store, the fourth in the Sacramento region, and the 94th in California, and it will anchor the entire center at 43,000 square feet, more than double the footprint of everything currently open at The Village combined.
That size difference is the whole story. A quick-service restaurant or a bank branch can go from shell to open sign in months. A 43,000-square-foot grocery store with a full seafood counter, a bakery, and a specialty cheese section takes longer to build out no matter how much everyone wants it open sooner. Whole Foods has been hiring for 34 positions across grocery, produce, bakery, seafood, and prepared foods, which is its own signal that the store has been close for a while even if the doors weren't ready.
When it does open, the company is treating it like a real Elk Grove store rather than a template dropped into a new market. Produce will come from more than 200 local growers, including Full Belly Farm, Durst Organic Growers, and Coke Farm. The specialty department is stocking Andante Dairy, Charles Chocolates, and Nicasio Valley Cheese, and Pachamama Coffee, the same roaster pouring cups for the first 300 shoppers on opening morning, shows up again in the regular coffee aisle. Those first 300 in line also walk away with a limited-edition Elk Grove tote bag and a coupon worth up to $100 in savings, per the company's own release.
What's Still Filling In
Two more names from the original announcement haven't opened yet. Barnes & Noble was added to the tenant lineup back in November 2025, according to a Pappas Investments leasing brochure reported by the Elk Grove Citizen, and still hasn't set a public opening date. Bank of America is expected to be the last tenant to open, likely in fall or winter 2026, because federal regulatory review for opening a new bank branch simply takes longer than a retail buildout does. Shake Shack and NuYo Frozen Yogurt round out the announced lineup and are also still to come.
None of this means the project stalled. It means a shopping center opens in the order its individual tenants can legally and physically finish, not in the order a press release lists them.
Don't Confuse This With the Project Down the Road
There's a second Elk Grove Boulevard development that gets mentioned in the same breath as The Village, and it's worth separating the two so you're not waiting on the wrong timeline.
Project Elevate, near Costco on Elk Grove Boulevard, is a different mixed-use development from a different landlord, CenterCal Properties. It's already landed one notable commitment: Popping Yolk Cafe, a Southern California brunch chain known for dishes like its Ube French Toast, has confirmed its first Northern California location will be part of the project. But construction on Project Elevate isn't expected to start until 2027, with an opening targeted for spring or summer 2028. If you've been holding out for that one, it's not a this-year story, or even a next-year one.
The same stretch of boulevard is also where Dignity Health plans to break ground later in 2026 on Elk Grove's first hospital. Between the two projects, that corridor is being rebuilt in phases that will play out over the rest of this decade, not this shopping season.
The Rest of the City Is Moving Too
The Village and Project Elevate aren't the only signs that Elk Grove's dining scene keeps adding rooms. Over on Laguna Boulevard, the space that used to be Romano's Macaroni Grill reopened in December 2025 as Interlude Kitchen & Bar, a wood-fired, farm-to-fork concept with sister restaurants Prelude Kitchen & Bar and Zinfandel Grille. It's part of the city's BReW program, which supports new breweries, restaurants, and wineries, and Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen has pointed to it as an example of the program working as intended.
None of these projects are on the same clock. That's really the point. If you've been waiting for one grand reveal at Elk Grove and Big Horn, you've actually been able to eat, drink coffee, and open a bank account there since June. The one thing still worth circling on the calendar is September 16, when the store that gave the project its headline finally catches up to everything that opened around it first.
If you're watching how this corner of Elk Grove keeps filling in and wondering what it means for property values nearby, our Elk Grove neighborhood page tracks that alongside the rest of what's happening here. And if you ever want to talk through what any of this means for your own plans in the area, the team at Chandler Gross Group is always glad to connect.
