Banners went up on the windows of the Palms at Town & Country's Publix on January 10, the kind that tell regulars a closing is coming even before they read the fine print. A week later, on January 17, the store that had anchored that stretch of Mills Drive since 1985 rang up its last order and shut for good. By mid-April, it was rubble.
If you have lived in Kendall for any length of time, you already know what's supposed to happen next. A grocery anchor disappears, foot traffic thins out, and the storefronts around it start quietly changing their hours or closing altogether while everyone waits for the replacement to get built. That is not what happened here. In the same stretch of months the Publix came down, the plaza around it added a Mediterranean fast-casual spot, a health-food cafe that pulled a line out the door on opening day, and two boutique fitness studios. The demolition and the leasing boom are happening at the same time, in the same parking lot.
The rebuild is going to take longer than the memory of the old store
Publix hasn't given a firm reopening date for the new Palms location, but the company has said its rebuild projects, which include full demolition of the old structure, typically run 12 to 18 months. Counting from the mid-April demolition, that puts a realistic opening window somewhere between spring and fall of 2027.
Until then, Publix has pointed Palms regulars toward four nearby stores:
- Publix at Kendall Mall, 9041 SW 107th Ave
- Publix at Market Square, 11750 SW 104th St
- Publix at Higate Square, 13820 SW 88th St
- Publix at the Crossings Shopping Village, 13001 SW 112th St
None of those are a straight swap for a store people had been driving to for forty years, and if you have adjusted your weekly run to one of them since January, you are not imagining the extra ten minutes.
The center didn't wait for the grocery store to come back to keep leasing space
Here is the part that runs against the usual script. Some of the biggest changes at the Palms were already locked in months before Publix's windows were papered over. Last October, a 3,684-square-foot Starbucks opened in a former Burger King space at 8268 Mills Drive. At the same time, a new Barnes & Noble opened inside the center, replacing an older location a mile away at Kendall Village.
Those two leases were signed and built out while the grocery anchor was still open and operating normally. Whatever the center's ownership was reading in foot traffic and sales numbers at the time, it was enough to commit to new space before anyone knew Publix was about to become a construction site.
The month the store came down, a bowl shop moved in next door
The pace didn't slow once the wrecking crews showed up. Cava opened a 2,720-square-foot location on April 17, 2026, in the space vacated by Bolay, just weeks after the Publix demolition began a short walk away. Pura Vida Miami, the local health-food chain, opened its second Miami location at the Palms this summer in a 3,425-square-foot cafe, and on opening day the line for avocado toast and acai bowls stretched out the door.
Two fitness concepts followed the same script. Yoga Joint, a Sunrise-based studio brand, is opening a 5,360-square-foot space next to J.Crew Factory this summer, and JETSET Pilates, a Wynwood import known for music-driven classes, has a 2,007-square-foot studio slated near Pisco y Nazca for this winter.
| Business | Space | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Starbucks | 3,684 sq ft, former Burger King | Opened October 2025 |
| Barnes & Noble | Replaced older Kendall Village location | Opened October 2025 |
| Cava | 2,720 sq ft, former Bolay space | Opened April 17, 2026 |
| Pura Vida Miami | 3,425 sq ft | Opened summer 2026 |
| Yoga Joint | 5,360 sq ft, next to J.Crew Factory | Opening summer 2026 |
| JETSET Pilates | 2,007 sq ft, near Pisco y Nazca | Opening winter 2026 |
Six new tenants, opened or announced within about a year, while the center's original grocery anchor sat as a hole in the ground for part of that window. Kimco Realty, which owns the majority of the Palms, framed the timing plainly.
"As the Palms at Town & Country continues to grow, we're focused on introducing brands that complement the existing mix," said Katie Wycoff, director of real estate at Kimco Realty Corp.
A landlord doesn't sign a Pilates studio and a Starbucks build-out next to a demolished supermarket unless the rest of the center is already pulling its own traffic. The Publix closure didn't create a vacuum. It happened to land in the middle of a leasing run that was already underway.
The same pattern is showing up a few blocks over
Widen the view past the Palms and the timing looks less like a coincidence specific to one plaza and more like something happening along this whole stretch of 88th Street. At Kendall Village Shopping Center, Lala's Burgers opened its first standalone restaurant this past winter at 13750 SW 88th Street, in the former Fujiya Japanese Restaurant space, after outgrowing its Tuesday pop-up run at Apocalypse BBQ. A few blocks away, Kung Fu Chicken, the Taiwanese fried chicken chain founded by Chef Yu Bi, is opening its fourth South Florida location this fall at 12536 SW 88th Street, joining sister locations at FIU, Little Havana and Miami Beach.
Neither of those openings has anything to do with the Palms or its grocery anchor. They are independent decisions by independent operators, made in the same twelve-month window, on the same corridor. That is worth noticing if you have been assuming the construction fencing around the old Publix means this part of Kendall is in a lull. The opposite case is easier to make from the addresses alone.
What this actually changes if you live here right now
For daily life, the practical read is simple. Grocery shopping means picking one of the four alternate Publix locations for the next year or so, and Market Square or Higate Square are the closer options depending on which side of the Turnpike you're on. For everything else, the center is not waiting around. You can get a Cava bowl or a Pura Vida smoothie today, book a Yoga Joint class this summer, and have a Pilates studio option by winter, all without the anchor store that used to be the reason most people pulled into that parking lot in the first place.
That's the detail that changes how you should think about this corner of Kendall. A supermarket closing usually reads as a warning sign about a shopping center's health. Here, it landed in the middle of the busiest run of new leases the Palms has seen in years, and the corridor around it is filling in independently at the same time. The story isn't that Kendall lost a grocery store. It's that the neighborhood kept building around the hole without slowing down to wait for it to close.
If you're weighing what a stretch like this says about where Kendall is headed, or you're curious how pockets of activity like this one tend to show up in local home values over time, SearchingHomes has been tracking Kendall block by block for 25 years. Let's talk about your next move.
