Bobby's Burgers by Bobby Flay treats new markets like a queue. Orem got the chain's first Utah location in 2024. Whatever came next was supposed to be the backup city, the place that waits its turn while the flagship location proves itself. Instead, Holladay got the second spot, opening inside the Holladay Hill shopping center on March 27, 2026, right next to Trader Joe's and up the street from the Megaplex Luxury Theaters.
That alone would be a minor local footnote. What makes it worth noticing is the company it's keeping. Trader Joe's picked Holladay as its seventh Utah store, well behind Salt Lake City, Draper, Cottonwood Heights, and Orem. That's the old pattern: Holladay as a solid, later addition to a chain's Utah map. But in the same twelve months, Magnolia Bakery opened its first franchise location in the entire United States here. Sploot Veterinary Care opened its first Utah clinic here. The Sicilian Butcher is angling for its first Utah address here too. A neighborhood that used to be seventh in line for a grocery chain is now first in line for a bakery with locations across the country.
The Corner That Used to Be Macy's
Most of this is happening inside Holladay Hills, a 58-acre mixed-use project on the former Cottonwood Mall site, built by a partnership between Woodbury Corporation, Millrock Capital, and Ball Ventures. Trader Joe's took the main floor of the former Macy's building, a 13,397-square-foot space at 1895 East Rodeo Walk Drive, and opened it on Halloween 2025 after hiring more than 40 employees from the surrounding community. The store sits inside a development that also includes The Grandeur, a luxury apartment building with studio, one, and two-bedroom units plus 17 penthouse condos, along with Chipotle, Rio Acai, Vio Med Spa, and Milkshake Factory.
At the Trader Joe's ribbon cutting, Holladay Mayor Rob Dahle told the crowd what he expected next.
"I think what you'll see in the next six months is several leases being signed, bringing in new businesses."
Six months later, that's close to exactly what happened. Kiln, a 52,000-square-foot flex office and coworking space, opened inside the development and has already attracted Mastercard, T-Mobile, Intuit, Penn Mutual, and Assos as tenants. Bobby's Burgers opened in March. Magnolia Bakery, the New York bakery known for its banana pudding, opened its first U.S. franchise store here by early summer, and the Holladay Hills location is the only Magnolia outpost anywhere with dirty soda on the menu. Sploot Veterinary Care opened its first Utah clinic on May 13, offering primary and urgent pet care 365 days a year from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The Sicilian Butcher, a meatball-and-charcuterie concept backed by Savory Fund, the same investment group behind Swig and Mo' Bettahs, was announced for the development in May but hasn't set an opening date yet.
Kiln's community director, Kristin Turley, described the mood on-site this way:
"It's been amazing to see the momentum building here."
A Grocery Run With a Burger Attached
The practical version of all this is small and specific. A Trader Joe's grocery run now sits across the drive from a made-to-order burger. A movie at the Megaplex is a two-minute walk from banana pudding. A pet with a limp or an ear infection can get seen at Sploot without a drive across the valley, any day of the year, no appointment required for urgent cases. A workday that used to mean a commute downtown can now happen inside a Kiln studio suite five minutes from home, which matters if you've ever tried to find flexible office space between downtown and the Point of the Mountain without adding thirty minutes to your day in either direction.
None of this required anyone to drive further. It required Holladay Hills to fill in enough that these errands stopped needing a trip somewhere else.
The Village Never Left
None of this touches the older commercial strip along Murray-Holladay Road, and that's worth being clear about, because the story here isn't replacement. Francks, the French restaurant chef Franck Peissel opened in 2004 and has run in the Knudsen Corners area ever since, is still a 50-seat reservation. Sicilia Mia, Real Taqueria, and Old Tbilisi Kitchen are still where a lot of Thursday nights end up.
That older core is adding its own new business, not just holding steady. A new concept called Monti, described in a job listing as a health-forward food and beverage business with breakfast, lunch, smoothies, juice, and coffee, is moving into the former Wendy's at 6135 South and Highland Drive. It's a modest opening compared to a national bakery chain's flagship U.S. franchise, but it means the Village side of Holladay is refreshing itself on its own timeline, independent of whatever Holladay Hills is doing a mile east.
The result is two active commercial centers instead of one fading into the other. A Saturday can start with coffee near Highland Drive and end with cupcakes at Holladay Hills without repeating a stop.
The One Weekend the Monastery Opens Its Gates
None of the retail growth changes the one Holladay tradition that runs independent of any developer's leasing schedule. The Carmelite Fair has been held on the grounds of the Carmel of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Monastery at 5714 Holladay Blvd every year since 1952, except during the pandemic, and this year's fair ran September 20 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The scale of it is easy to undersell if you haven't been. More than 3,000 visitors came through the gates this year, according to the Diocese of Salt Lake City, and Mother Therese, the Carmel's prioress, said donations from the single-day fair make up 80 percent of the monastery's yearly income for its 13 cloistered nuns. The Utah Pipe Band performed at the fair for its 50th consecutive year. A 5K run called Run for the Nuns kicked off that morning. The nuns took up beekeeping this year, and jars of their honey joined the usual jams, jellies, and handmade crafts at the Carmelite Corner booth. The Knights of Columbus raffled off a 2026 Kia Sportage donated by Jerry Seiner Kia, along with an iPad Pro, a Traeger Grill, and cash prizes, with winners coming from as far as West Jordan, Bountiful, and Murray.
The fair sits about a mile and a half from Holladay Hills, and the two have nothing to do with each other financially. One runs on a leasing calendar set by a development partnership. The other runs on a fundraising cycle that predates almost every business on this list by seven decades. Both are simply part of what's happening in Holladay in September 2026, on roughly the same few square miles of the east bench.
The Sicilian Butcher still hasn't set an opening date, which means the last name on this year's list of firsts hasn't shown up yet.
If you're curious how Holladay Hills' build-out is reshaping the streets around it, or want more on what's opening next along Highland Drive, Bybee + Co Realty keeps an eye on this corridor. Contact Us.
