Pull into the parking lot at Mills Drive and 88th Street this month and something feels off, even if you can't immediately name it. The Publix is gone. The bookstore moved. There's a line of cars for a Mediterranean bowl chain that didn't exist here six months ago. If you've shopped this stretch of Kendall for any length of time, the center feels like it's mid-sentence, and it is.
The easy read is decline: another aging strip mall losing tenants one by one. The actual story is closer to the opposite. The Palms at Town & Country is being rebuilt anchor by anchor, on purpose, by a landlord that has done this exact playbook before in other markets. Understanding that difference matters if you're the one driving here every week wondering when your grocery store comes back.
The grocery gap is the one everyone feels
The Publix at 8250 Mills Drive had been open since 1985, a fixture through four decades of Kendall grocery runs. It closed for good on January 17, 2026, not for a remodel but for a full teardown and rebuild on the same site, according to reporting on the closure. Publix hasn't published an exact reopening date. Typical rebuilds of this kind run a year to eighteen months once demolition starts, per that same coverage, which would put a reopening somewhere between early and mid-2027. Other reporting on Publix's South Florida rebuild pipeline described this particular project as needing a couple of years to bring a full-service grocery back to the property, which stretches the window closer to 2028. Either way, this isn't a short gap.
In the meantime, Publix itself pointed shoppers toward four nearby locations: Kendall Mall on SW 107th Avenue, Market Square on SW 104th Street, Higate Square on SW 88th Street, and the Crossings Shopping Village on SW 112th Street. If your Pub Sub habit runs through Mills Drive, one of those four is your stand-in for a while.
The Toys "R" Us box finally has a tenant
The old Toys "R" Us building on the property has sat dark since June 2018, which means it went eight years without a single tenant before Kimco Realty, the center's owner, signed a lease with Tesla. The automaker is turning the 45,000-plus square foot box into a showroom and service center, expected to open in late 2026. Kimco's leasing representative Katie Wycoff called it a distinctive addition that underscores the property's strength, which is corporate language for what residents will actually notice: the biggest dead space in the parking lot is finally getting used again.
What already landed this year
Two changes are done and open, not pending.
Cava opened its first Kendall location in mid-April 2026, moving into the 2,720 square foot space that Bolay left behind. It's the chain's fifth South Florida outpost after Hialeah, Plantation, Brickell, and Aventura, and social video posted after the opening showed lines still running 35 minutes deep, a wait one visitor called an improvement over previous trips.
Barnes & Noble is also new to this specific spot, even though it isn't new to Kendall. The bookstore had operated out of a much larger West Kendall building for more than 30 years before relocating to a smaller footprint inside the Palms at Town & Country. Longtime visitors at the closing weekend wondered aloud how the store would fit into what looked, from the outside, like a much smaller space. The store reopened at its new Mills Drive location in October 2025. Right next to it, a 3,684 square foot Starbucks opened the same month, in the spot a Burger King used to occupy.
Two more should be open by the time you read this
As of this summer, two additional tenants were slated to open at the Palms: Yoga Joint, a Sunrise-based fitness studio taking a 5,360 square foot space next to J.Crew Factory, and Pura Vida Miami, a 3,425 square foot cafe serving bowls, smoothies, and coffee. Both were announced for a summer 2026 opening. If you haven't spotted them on a recent trip, they're worth watching for on your next one.
Here's a quick snapshot of where things stand as of this writing:
| Business | Space | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Publix (rebuild) | Full store | Closed since Jan. 17, 2026; reopening estimated 2027-2028 |
| Tesla | 45,000+ sq ft | Signed lease; opening late 2026 |
| Cava | 2,720 sq ft | Open since mid-April 2026 |
| Barnes & Noble | Relocated | Open since October 2025 |
| Starbucks | 3,684 sq ft | Open since October 2025 |
| Yoga Joint | 5,360 sq ft | Slated for summer 2026 |
| Pura Vida Miami | 3,425 sq ft | Slated for summer 2026 |
The dining scene stretching past the mall itself
Two blocks away, on SW 88th Street, the same appetite for reinvention shows up outside Kimco's property line.
Kung Fu Chicken is set to open this fall at 12536 SW 88th Street, its fourth South Florida location after outposts at Florida International University, Little Havana, and Miami Beach. The Taiwanese fast-casual concept comes from Chef Yu Bi and her husband, Dr. Tingjun Lei, who met while studying hospitality at FIU. Chef Yu Bi has said the Kendall opening carries personal weight because the neighborhood is where much of their Miami story started. The Kendall menu will include a Classic Chicken Sandwich and a lineup of Kung Fu Wings with house-made sauces.
A few doors down, Lala's Burgers opened in December 2025 at 13750 SW 88th Street, in the space that used to house Fujiya Japanese Restaurant. It's the standalone version of a concept that began as a Tuesday pop-up inside Apocalypse BBQ, the barbecue spot Jeff and Laura "Lala" Budnechky started from their backyard in 2020. Apocalypse BBQ itself had already outgrown its original 43-seat location, expanding to a 190-seat space at Kendall Village Shopping Center in March 2025. Lala's now runs as a 70-seat, full-service spinoff with its own craft beer list built around South Florida breweries like Tripping Animals and Wynwood Brewing Company.
Why it's all happening at once
Here's the part that explains everything above instead of just listing it. Kimco Realty, a publicly traded REIT that owns roughly 528 properties nationwide, acquired the majority stake in the Palms at Town & Country in 2021 when Weingarten Realty Investors merged into the company. In 2023, Kimco filed plans with Miami-Dade County to replace the Kohl's building with two 12-story apartment towers totaling 630 units and roughly 35,000 additional square feet of retail. That proposal was described at the time as an early-stage vision, and there's been no public update on its timeline since. But it tells you what kind of asset Kimco believes this property should become: a live-and-shop plaza with residential density layered on top of retail, the same model the company has already built at Dania Pointe in Broward County.
Seen through that lens, the Publix demolition, the Tesla lease, the Cava opening, and the fitness and cafe additions aren't separate stories. They're the same repositioning strategy playing out lease by lease. A REIT doesn't let its anchor grocery store sit dark for two years by accident, and it doesn't sign a national automaker into a long-vacant toy store box without a plan for the block around it. The turnover feels chaotic from the driver's seat because you're living through it one closed storefront at a time. From Kimco's seat, it's a multi-year renovation with a defined direction, even if the finish line is still a couple of years out.
For anyone who calls this stretch of Kendall home, the practical takeaway is simple. The disruption is real, but it isn't a sign the center is fading. It's a sign someone with 528 properties worth of experience thinks this particular corner of Mills Drive is worth rebuilding piece by piece. Expect a few more surprises before the Publix reopens, and expect the finished version to look less like the 1985 original and more like the kind of mixed-use hub South Florida keeps building on top of its older strip malls.
If you're watching how a neighborhood evolves this closely, whether you're weighing a move within Kendall or just trying to keep track of where to park, Pam Mayers and the Mayers Group follow these local shifts as part of the job. Let's Connect. Schedule a Consultation whenever a question about the market here comes up.
