The Corner That Anchored Leawood's Town Center for 30 Years Is Becoming Something New

"This is a great addition and I think an improvement over the Hereford House," Leawood planning commission chair David Coleman said in April, signing off on plans to demolish the building that had anchored the north side of Town Center Plaza since 1996.

That single sentence tells you more about what's happening at 119th and Roe than any list of new store openings could. Two restaurants that framed this shopping center for a generation are gone within the same 24 months, and in their place the developer isn't just filling vacancies. It's recruiting names that have never operated in Kansas before.

The Two Buildings Everyone Used as Landmarks

For most of the last three decades, if you wanted to describe where something was at Town Center Plaza, you said "near Hereford House" or "across from Houlihan's." Both buildings sat at opposite corners of the same shopping center near 119th and Roe, and both had been there since roughly the plaza's founding.

Hereford House closed in August 2024 after financial strain tied to lawsuits stemming from an employee deliberately contaminating food. Houlihan's closed not long after. By early this year, both storefronts sat empty at what had been the busiest intersection of the center.

In April 2026, the Leawood Planning Commission unanimously advanced redevelopment plans for both sites. The old Hereford House building, still standing at 12,228 square feet with its original brick and stucco exterior, is becoming the second location of Brooksider Sportsbar & Grill, a longstanding fixture of Kansas City's Brookside neighborhood. The plans call for a patio extension of 746 square feet plus an additional 897 square feet of turfed outdoor space with a television screen, yard games, and more seating. Both projects still need final sign-off from the Leawood City Council, but the commission's unanimous recommendation makes that a formality more than a question mark.

Across the way, the old Houlihan's building is coming down entirely. In its place, renderings filed with the city show a two-building development designed to house four separate restaurants. The developer representative behind the project, identified in city filings as Olson, declined to name tenants but described them as "high-end restaurants" new to the area, adding "It's almost like Town Center is now the hot place for restaurants."

The Same Season, a Different Kind of Debut

While the two oldest dining anchors were working through demolition permits, the retail side of the same shopping center was quietly building a different kind of resume: a run of first-to-market openings that a mall developer chasing foot traffic, not just rent checks, tends to recruit.

Since the start of 2026, Town Center Plaza and Crossing have added:

• Vuori, which opened its doors Friday, Sept. 11, in a 4,603-square-foot space at Town Center Plaza. It's the brand's first Kansas store and its first entry into the Kansas City metro altogether.
• A Coach Coffee Shop opening next to EVEREVE at Town Center Crossing, pairing Coach's luxury retail with a coffee concept that will be only the third of its kind in the country.
• A LEGO store next to Tecovas, the only LEGO location in the entire Johnson County market.
• Drybar, opening next to Trader Joe's.
• [solidcore], a fitness studio slotted between Athleta and Gorjana.
• J.Crew, which opened near Kendra Scott and Bluemercury.
• An expanded Lululemon footprint at Town Center Crossing.

None of these are backfills in the ordinary sense. A national activewear brand doesn't pick its first Kansas location by accident, and a coffee concept with only two other locations in the country isn't chasing cheap rent. These are the kind of tenants a shopping center recruits when it's trying to reset what people associate with the address, not just keep the lights on in a vacant storefront.

Layered onto that retail run is a third dining debut set for November 2026: a chef-driven Cali-Mex restaurant slated for the north side of Town Center Plaza, promising scratch-made flavors and craft cocktails. Combined with the incoming Brooksider location and whatever fills the four-restaurant development on the old Houlihan's site, Town Center Plaza will have turned over the majority of its dining lineup inside a single calendar year while simultaneously landing three national retail firsts.

Why the Timing Isn't a Coincidence

Shopping centers don't usually get to choose when their oldest tenants close. Hereford House left because of a lawsuit, not a lease decision by the landlord. But what happens after a legacy tenant exits is where a developer's strategy actually shows up, and the pattern here is specific: instead of signing whichever chain wanted the space fastest, ownership held out for tenants who could put "first in Kansas" or "only in Johnson County" on their own marketing.

That's a different kind of bet than simply filling square footage. It signals a shopping center trying to become the answer to "where do I take out-of-town family" or "where's the place with the thing nobody else around here has," rather than just another stop with the same national chains you'd find at any suburban plaza. Coleman's comment about the Brooksider swap being an "improvement" and Olson's framing of Town Center as "the hot place for restaurants" aren't casual asides. They're the language of a redevelopment plan that expects this corner to look and feel different by this time next year than it has for the last three decades.

What This Looks Like on a Saturday This Fall

If you've lived near Town Center for a while, the practical version of all this is simple: your usual rotation is about to expand. Grab coffee at the new Coach shop before browsing Vuori's new space. If you've got kids, the LEGO store is the only one of its kind in the county, which means it's now the default answer for a rainy Saturday that used to require a drive into Kansas City or Overland Park. Dinner used to mean Hereford House or Houlihan's almost by default. This fall it means picking between whatever's already open, whatever opens next at Brooksider, and, come November, a new Cali-Mex kitchen on the plaza's north side.

None of this required anyone to move. It required a corner that had looked the same for 30 years to finally change, and a developer willing to wait for tenants worth waiting for.

If you're weighing whether a corner like this adds or subtracts from a home's day-to-day livability, that's the kind of neighborhood-level read Hannah Murrell and the team at The Red Bow Standard build into every Leawood conversation. Reach out when you're ready to talk about what a changing block actually means for your search.