For two years the corner of Elk Grove Boulevard and Big Horn was a construction fence with a rendering taped to it. As of the first week of July 2026, that fence is gone, four tenants are serving customers, and a fifth opens Tuesday. If you have driven past recently and wondered whether it was worth turning in, the answer changed last month.
This is a resident's read on The Village as it actually stands today: which doors are open, which open next, and what the sequence tells you about where the weeknight center of gravity in Elk Grove is shifting.
The center of gravity moved in late June
Elk Grove already has two large retail nodes that residents rotate through. The Ridge at Elk Grove Boulevard and Bruceville sits on the Costco and Amazon Fresh anchors, and Laguna Gateway carries T.J. Maxx, Home Depot, and now Interlude Kitchen & Bar in the old Macaroni Grill space. Both work. Neither has an evening bench.
The Village is the first Elk Grove center built with the assumption that people will linger after dinner. The 110,150-square-foot shopping center is located at Elk Grove and Big Horn boulevards near Highway 99, and about 90% is pre-leased with roughly 10,000 square feet still available. The tenants that have opened so far are the ones that turn a strip center into a destination.
What is actually open as of this week
| Tenant | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Yard House | Open | Ribbon cutting June 30, 2026 |
| Mendocino Farms | Open | Grand opening June 22, 2026 |
| Chick-fil-A | Open | Recently opened |
| SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union | Open | Recently opened |
| Philz Coffee | Opens July 8, 2026 | Announced date |
| Whole Foods | Coming | Anchor tenant |
| Shake Shack | Coming | Announced |
| Barnes & Noble | Coming, fall 2026 | Announced |
| Fluffy Fluffy Dessert Cafe | Coming | Japanese soufflé pancakes, croffles |
Chick-fil-A, SchoolsFirst Credit Union and Mendocino Farms recently opened at the center, Mendocino Farms held its grand opening June 22, future tenants include Shake Shack, Whole Foods, Barnes & Noble opening in the fall, and Philz Coffee, and Philz Coffee is scheduled to open July 8.
Yard House is the anchor of the anchor
Yard House opened at the end of June with an Elk Grove Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting and something the chain has not done anywhere else. The restaurant is debuting a new beer garden concept for the chain, and the outdoor space features synthetic turf, picnic-style seating and a full outdoor bar, serving as the pilot design for future Yard House locations. If the pilot works here, the version rolled out to future stores will have Elk Grove's fingerprints on it.
The chain footprint matters for context. The location is Yard House's fourth in the Sacramento region, joining restaurants in Downtown Sacramento, Roseville and Folsom. Until June 30, an Elk Grove resident who wanted this specific menu was driving to Roseville or Downtown. That drive is now optional. Practical detail for planning: Yard House is open daily for lunch, dinner and late-night dining from 11 a.m. to midnight Monday through Friday and Sunday, and until 12:30 a.m. Saturday, and the restaurant offers online ordering, curbside pickup and delivery. Happy hour runs 3 to 6 p.m. weekdays, with a late-night happy hour beginning at 10 p.m. Sundays until closing.
The July 8 marker
Philz Coffee opening on July 8 is the smaller headline that will change more daily routines. Mendocino Farms already gives the center a weekday lunch draw. Chick-fil-A handles the drive-through breakfast lane. Philz is the piece that turns The Village into a place people stop before work rather than a place people drive to for dinner.
If you already run mornings at Old Soul, Temple, or one of the drive-throughs on Laguna, this is not a replacement so much as a second option that sits closer to Highway 99 for anyone commuting north. The location closes a small geographic gap that has kept mornings in south Elk Grove tethered to whatever is nearest the on-ramp.
What is still coming, and roughly when
The published tenant list has three names still to open, plus a dessert concept that has flown mostly under the local radar.
- Whole Foods, the announced anchor, still under buildout.
- Shake Shack, announced, no public date.
- Barnes & Noble, opening in the fall per the developer.
- Fluffy Fluffy Dessert Cafe, a chain specializing in Japanese-style soufflé pancakes, croffles, roll cakes, and macarons.
The Fluffy Fluffy addition is the wildcard. Elk Grove has plenty of coffee and plenty of frozen yogurt. It has almost no late-evening dessert-and-sit format aimed at the after-dinner hour, which is the exact slot the Yard House beer garden creates demand for. Whether the two schedules line up will be the small test of whether The Village functions as a linked evening trip or as a set of parallel visits.
A weeknight sequence that actually works
If you have not been yet and want the shortest version of a first walk-through, this is the order that makes sense as of this week:
- Park on the Big Horn side rather than the Elk Grove Boulevard side. The Yard House frontage is closer to the interior walkway.
- Start at Mendocino Farms if it is before 8 p.m., or Yard House if it is later. Both take walk-ins on weeknights right now.
- Loop past the Philz storefront to see the July 8 signage and the Whole Foods buildout wall.
- If you have kids in the car, Chick-fil-A is the fallback that will not have a 40-minute wait like the Laguna location on a Friday.
- Leave via Big Horn southbound to avoid the Elk Grove Boulevard signal stack near the freeway.
None of that appears on the developer's site. It comes from actually walking the center, which is the point of a post like this.
Where this leaves The Ridge and Laguna Gateway
The Ridge is still the errand center. Costco, Amazon Fresh, Sephora, In-N-Out, and the incoming Marshalls, an off-price retailer in the T.J. Maxx and HomeGoods family, announced as a future tenant at the southeast corner and set to occupy a 20,000-square-foot space near Nordstrom Rack and Club Studio gym, keep it anchored to weekend chores. Laguna Gateway has stepped up on dinner with Interlude Kitchen & Bar, an elevated modern American concept built around wood-fired cooking, located in the Laguna Gateway shopping center alongside anchors such as T.J. Maxx and Home Depot, holding its soft opening in late December. Both centers are doing what they have always done, only sharper.
The Village fills the gap neither of them filled: a walkable evening block with a real bar, a bookstore coming, and a coffee shop opening this week. For residents who have watched Elk Grove's dining map grow one drive-through at a time, that is the shift worth noting. The city's July 4 celebration this year leaned into it, with the Salute to the Red, White & Blue featuring live music, family activities, vendors, expanded food and beverage offerings, and a nighttime finale of drones and fireworks lighting up the sky at Elk Grove Park. The Village opening the same week was not coincidence. It was calendar management.
What this means if you own here
Nothing about a new shopping center changes the fundamentals of a home valuation on a specific street. What it does change is the story you tell a buyer about the neighborhood, and the story a buyer tells themselves about their weeknights. Homes within a short drive of Elk Grove Boulevard and Big Horn now sit inside a different amenity map than they did in May. That is a soft factor, not a comp adjustment, but soft factors are what get an offer written on a Tuesday instead of a Sunday.
If you are thinking about listing this summer or fall and want a read on how the amenity map around your specific block has shifted, Paul Galindo is happy to walk the numbers with you. Get your home valuation and a plain conversation about timing, no pressure to list.
