How long does an empty storefront actually sit empty in Kimball Junction? This month gives two very different answers, and the gap between them says more about how this neighborhood works than either story does on its own.
A ramen shop and a kids' playground are both about to fill spaces that sat dark for months. Down the road, the biggest vacant property in the neighborhood, the outlet mall everyone still calls by its old name, has been waiting since February 2024 for a single county vote, and that vote just got postponed again, this time over a clerical mistake nobody caught until midnight.
Two Buildings, Filled Within a Season
Koyoté, the Tokyo-style ramen and izakaya spot that built a following in Salt Lake City's Marmalade neighborhood after opening at the end of 2023, is opening its second location in Kimball Junction this October. Chef Hiro Tagai and business partner Felipe Oliveira signed the lease on the former Hana Ramen Bar space this past spring, once the price and the build-out both worked in their favor. Tagai has said Park City had been on his radar for a while, partly because of existing Marmalade regulars who split time between the city and the mountains, but the real estate math there has always been the sticking point. The Kimball Junction location will run the same clear-broth menu and no-server, order-by-QR-code system as the original, not a redesigned concept like Koyoté's Japanese-Italian spot in Central Ninth.
A few doors down the retail corridor, the empty Best Buy building is about to become something Kimball Junction hasn't had before: an indoor play space built for toddlers on a snow day. Treehouse Park City, from local resident Fontaine McFadden, is leasing roughly 7,200 square feet of the 30,000-square-foot building and plans to open this winter. Founding memberships, sold under the name Treehouse Early Birds, launch sometime this month. There are 75 spots, sold per child rather than per family, priced as a year-long membership paid upfront at a discount that holds for three years. McFadden is also working with the building's landlords on better signage for the parking garage underneath the property, accessible near the back by Hearth and Hill, which holds hundreds of spaces that most visitors currently don't know exist.
| Building | What was there | What's moving in | Expected opening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Former Hana Ramen Bar space | Hana Ramen Bar | Koyoté, second location | October 2026 |
| Former Best Buy | Best Buy | Treehouse Park City, indoor play space | Winter 2026 |
Two national and regional retailers left, and within a single season, both spaces have new tenants with opening dates on the calendar. That's the pace of small commercial turnover here right now.
The Trail You Use Without Thinking About It
If you walk a dog on Run-A-Muk during the week, you'll notice the closure before you notice anything about restaurants. Mountain Trails Foundation executive director Lora Anthony confirmed the trail closed to weekday use starting September 2 for resurfacing work, staying open on weekends until the project wraps. The foundation expects the work to run through the month, so plan weekday routes elsewhere for the next few weeks if Run-A-Muk is part of your regular loop.
The Property That's Been Waiting Since 2024
Now the slow one. Most people in Kimball Junction still call it the outlets, but the property has gone by Junction Commons since a rebrand a couple of years ago, and its owner, Chicago-based Singerman Real Estate, has been trying to turn the upper loop of stores into housing since a proposal first surfaced in February 2024.
The plan has shrunk considerably since then. When it first went to the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission, which forwarded it to the county council on a 6-1 vote in February 2026, the proposal called for 433 residential units, with 205 set aside as affordable. By late June, after the council raised concerns about density and traffic, the developer had cut 89 units, bringing the total down and reworking the affordability mix so that roughly 60 percent of the housing would qualify as affordable.
Even now, the exact count depends on which account of the same meeting you read. Coverage of the September 2 hearing describes the plan as 270 multi-family units plus 70 townhomes, 340 total, with about 55,000 square feet of commercial space folded in. Other reporting on that identical meeting puts the total at 370 units, 220 of them deed-restricted affordable, split between 188 units priced near 80 percent of the area's median income and 32 units near 60 percent. Eighty percent of area median income works out to $134,000 for a family of four. Whichever number is right, both are a clear step down from the 433 units first filed two and a half years ago.
The vote itself has become almost as much a story as the project. The council was set to approve or deny the rezone on September 2, and got as far as discussing a motion around midnight before Councilmember Roger Armstrong noticed the item hadn't been agendized correctly.
"We were actually in the process of making a motion when we realized that it wasn't agendized properly."
That's Councilmember Megan McKenna, describing the moment the vote had to be pulled. A special meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, September 8, to try again.
Part of why this keeps stretching out is that Junction Commons isn't the only major project reshaping this stretch of road. Right next to it, Six Ridge Partners, the developer formerly known as Dakota Pacific, is moving forward on Altus Park City, an 885-unit project on the site of the old tech center. The county renamed Tech Center Drive to Nordic Drive on August 19, and the planning commission approved subdividing the land into six lots the following week, clearing the way for the first phases: one lot for affordable housing, one for market-rate units. An underground Chevron pipeline runs diagonally through the property, which means the developer has to keep light poles and foundations off that stretch of ground entirely, though it can still pave and run utilities above or below it depending on the segment. A trail is eventually meant to trace that pipeline route and connect Altus to Junction Commons, tying the two projects together on foot even before either one is finished.
County staff have said outright that the traffic study for Junction Commons can't really be separated from what Altus Park City is about to add to the same intersection, which is a large part of why a project everyone agrees is a better use of the land than a fading outlet mall is still, after two and a half years, one vote away from anything.
What Actually Changes This Month
If you live in Kimball Junction, here's what's real right now, not hypothetical: a new ramen spot with a following worth the drive from Salt Lake opens in October, a genuinely new option for parents with young kids opens this winter, and your weekday dog walk on Run-A-Muk needs a detour through September. Those are the kinds of changes that show up fast because they only require a lease and a build-out.
The mall redevelopment is a different animal entirely. It touches zoning code, affordable housing formulas, and a second megaproject next door, so it moves at the pace of hearings and traffic studies rather than the pace of a signed lease. Watching Tuesday's meeting won't tell you what your favorite parking lot will look like next year, but it will tell you whether the county is finally ready to move past the version of Kimball Junction that's been waiting since 2024.
If you're weighing what any of this means for a specific street or a specific listing, that's the kind of question worth a real answer instead of a guess. Pack | Fey works this neighborhood daily and can walk you through what these changes mean for your property or your search. Request a private home valuation to start that conversation.
