How many separate grocery stores does Central Park actually have on the way right now? Ask three neighbors at Founders Green and you'll likely get three different answers, and none of them will agree on which one is closer to opening. That confusion isn't really anyone's fault. Two unrelated grocery projects are moving through the neighborhood at the same time, on completely different clocks, while a much bigger retail box a few blocks away is on track to open first.
Central Park already has a Sprouts and a Natural Grocers, so nobody here is waiting on their first place to buy milk. What people are actually waiting on is two specific brands, and both are taking longer than the construction fencing might suggest.
Two Grocery Projects, Two Very Different Clocks
The first is Whole Foods, planned for a pad at 40th Avenue and Central Park Boulevard. The site plan calls for four buildings on 6.39 acres, with Whole Foods as the anchor and three smaller buildings set aside for other shops and restaurants. A commercial leasing flyer for that smaller retail space listed a second-quarter 2026 delivery, which is almost certainly where the "it's opening this year" chatter started. But Front Porch, the community's own newspaper, has reported the same target for over a year now: an April 2025 update put the grocery store's opening at 2027, and a follow-up in June 2026 repeated that same date. A signed lease and a site plan don't move a parking lot onto anyone's preferred timeline, and the outlet that actually covers this site closely has been consistent about the wait.
The second project sits a mile away at Avenues at Northfield, the shopping center long known as The Shops at Northfield before a 2026 rebrand. Front Porch has reported that construction is underway on a Trader Joe's at 8564 E. Northfield Blvd, next to the Old Navy. A public relations manager for the chain told the paper in an email that no timeline has been confirmed for stores in the area, and as of the report, the location hadn't yet appeared on the company's own site listing upcoming stores. Stockdale Capital Partners, the firm behind the Avenues at Northfield transformation, has folded this grocery piece into a broader 2027 target alongside a new athletic club.
So the honest answer to "when's the grocery store coming" depends entirely on which grocery store someone means, and the one with visible construction happening right now is the one with the least confirmed date attached to it.
The Furniture Store Skipped the Line
Meanwhile, a much larger retail box at that same Avenues at Northfield property is moving faster than either grocery project. Wayfair is building a 140,000-square-foot, two-story store in the former Macy's space, its first brick-and-mortar location in the Mountain West and only its fourth physical store in the country. Stockdale's own March 2026 announcement put the opening in the fourth quarter of 2026, and reporting through July 2026 confirmed the store is still tracking to that window. The Denver location will include The Porch, an all-day café, and 19 departments spanning furniture to florals.
Bastian Peters, Stockdale's managing director of retail, described the broader project as reflecting how the intersection of 47th and 48th Avenue will connect with a newly pedestrian Main Street to create a hub for Central Park. That's the same transformation that's bringing the grocery and the athletic club, but the furniture store is the one clearing construction fastest.
The reason isn't mysterious once you look at what each project actually requires. A department store box like the old Macy's already had two working floors, loading infrastructure, and utility hookups sized for a large retailer. A grocery store build, even after a lease is signed, means new refrigeration systems, food service permitting, and often a longer runway before opening day lines up with construction completion. The size of the announcement has nothing to do with how fast the doors open. The condition of the shell does.
| Project | Status this fall | Opening window |
|---|---|---|
| Wayfair (former Macy's, Avenues at Northfield) | Interior buildout underway | Fourth quarter 2026 |
| Trader Joe's (Avenues at Northfield) | Construction visible near Old Navy | Not yet announced |
| Whole Foods (40th & Central Park Blvd) | Site work underway | 2027, per Front Porch |
| Life Time athletic club (former JCPenney) | Not yet started | 2027 |
The Fastest Opening Wasn't a Big Box at All
The same pattern shows up at a much smaller scale a mile away in Eastbridge Town Center, where Fire on the Mountain just opened its third Denver location. The wing shop, a past Westword Readers' Choice pick for Best Chicken Wings, took over a space that TAG Burger Bar had vacated in July. Owner Andrea West described the timeline to Westword: the previous tenant closed one day, and Fire on the Mountain took over the lease the next, then began what she called a bit of a flip. The whole process, from taking the keys to opening the doors, took about a month and a half.
West said the existing space had most of the infrastructure a restaurant needs already in place, along with a liquor license that transferred with the lease, which let inspections move at a pace she called bonkers for how slow restaurant licensing usually runs. It's the same principle at work at Northfield, just compressed into weeks instead of quarters. A kitchen that already has grease traps, hoods, and a transferable license opens fast. A grocery store that needs new refrigeration lines and food permitting from scratch does not, no matter how prominent the brand name is.
What's Already Running While the Fences Stay Up
None of this waiting changes what's already working in the neighborhood every week. The Central Park Farmers Market runs on the South Green, also called Founders Green, every Sunday from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., a season that started June 21 and continues through October 11, 2026. Jarman & Co. manages the market, and the vendor rule is specific: everything sold has to be grown, raised, or produced in Colorado or a bordering county, with only rare case-by-case exceptions. That's not boilerplate market policy. It's the reason the honey and the bread at that market taste like they came from somewhere close, because they did.
Under the 75-foot aluminum airplane wing at Eastbridge, Little Man Ice Cream Central Park, the shop that spent years operating as The Constellation, follows its own seasonal rhythm rather than a construction timeline. It closes every winter and reopens each spring, a pattern tied to the site's history as a nod to Stapleton International Airport's old arrival gate. Anyone who's walked past it dark in January and assumed it shut down for good is reading the wrong signal. As the weather cools into fall, that same seasonal close is coming again, on its usual schedule rather than anyone else's.
Avenues at Northfield already has plenty open too, from lululemon and Sephora to Bass Pro Shops and Harkins Theatres, alongside the newer additions like MINISO and American Eagle that arrived earlier this year. The empty anchor boxes get more attention because they're the visible gap in an otherwise full shopping center, but they're also the two spaces that were never going to move at retail speed to begin with.
If you're trying to guess which construction fence in Central Park comes down first, the size of the sign out front is the wrong thing to watch. What matters is how much was already sitting inside the box before anyone signed a lease.
If you're curious how these changes might affect your own corner of Central Park down the road, Lane Lyon knows this neighborhood block by block and is happy to talk through what you're seeing out your own window. You can also request a free home valuation or consultation anytime.
