For twenty years, Town Square was where national brands set up their second or third DFW location after Dallas and maybe Frisco. That pattern is breaking. The stores announced for the back half of 2026 are, in several cases, the brand's first store anywhere in Tarrant County. If you live here and only pass through on weekends, the storefronts you walked by in June will read differently by October.
The Pattern Behind This Year's Openings
Kite Realty Group, the Indianapolis-based REIT that owns the 130-acre, 120-plus tenant Town Square, has publicly framed the last twelve months as the most significant leap in tenant mix in the project's history. Read the leasing list and the strategy is legible: brands that historically stopped at NorthPark or Legacy West are now planting a Tarrant County flag here first.
Three of the highest-profile 2026 arrivals are exactly that:
| Brand | Address | Size | Tarrant County status |
|---|---|---|---|
| ON Running | 415 Grand Avenue East, between Alo and Sunglass Hut | 6,000 sq ft | First store |
| Reformation | 213 Grand Avenue, near lululemon and YETI | 2,007 sq ft | First store |
| Crate & Barrel | 321 State Street, adjacent to Tyler's | 18,945 sq ft | New store |
| Ascension Coffee | 100 State Street, former Corner Bakery | 4,223 sq ft | Second (after West Bend, 2020) |
ON Running will open its first Tarrant County store in a 6,000-square-foot space at 415 Grand Avenue East, positioned between Alo and Sunglass Hut, and Reformation's first Tarrant County boutique will occupy a 2,007-square-foot space at 213 Grand Avenue near lululemon and YETI. Crate & Barrel is anticipated to open near Independence Day 2026 in an 18,945-square-foot store at 321 State Street, adjacent to Tyler's. Rothy's has already opened.
That trio is the real story. When a REIT lands three "first-in-market" leases in a single announcement cycle, the leasing team is no longer marketing to shoppers who might drive over from Grapevine. They are pricing the trade area at Preston Hollow and Highland Park benchmarks and betting the household density inside a ten-minute drive supports it.
Ascension Coffee at 100 State Street
Of everything opening, the café at 100 State Street is the one worth paying attention to first, and not only because Southlake has been short on a real specialty coffee anchor since the Corner Bakery era.
Dallas-based Ascension Coffee, which just won Coffee Shop of the Year in the 2026 CultureMap Dallas Tastemaker Awards, will open its first Southlake location in late summer or early fall at Town Square, at 100 State Street, in a 4,223-square-foot space previously occupied by Corner Bakery. The café is slated for August. It will be the company's seventh location and second in Tarrant County, following its Fort Worth shop at West Bend that opened in 2020.
Ascension is not a Blue Bottle clone dropped into a suburb. The company has served food since its 2012 debut in Dallas' Design District, and has stepped up the café component in recent years through partnerships with purveyors including croissants from Fort Worth's Black Rooster Bakery and bagels from Starship Bagel. Culinary director Jason Connelly is building the Southlake food menu around overnight oats, steak hash, pancakes, fresh-baked pastries, Latin chicken and grain bowls, Mediterranean chicken naan, and Asian noodle bowls.
Two operational details matter for how the café will feel day to day. First, the space will run a full espresso bar plus a slow bar highlighting rotating single-origin coffees, which means a distinct pour-over queue alongside the standard espresso line. Second, beans are roasted in-house at Ascension's Dallas roastery, so what you drink at 100 State Street will be the same green-coffee program president Jessica Keenan, a certified Q Arabica Coffee Grader, is buying for the Design District flagship.
For the resident who has been driving to White Rock or Frisco for a serious coffee morning, the math changes in August.
What's Happening Outside Town Square
The retail energy is not confined to State Street and Grand Avenue.
At Park Village, Hudson House is taking over the former RA Sushi space, bringing an East Coast-inspired room with an oyster bar, its signature cheeseburgers, and its martini program to Southlake. That is a straightforward, high-utility addition. Park Village has been thin on destination dinner options since RA closed.
The Wonder food hall concept is preparing its DFW debut in Southlake, positioned for a summer opening, with construction expected to wrap by mid-June. The platform lets guests order across more than 20 restaurant concepts in a single transaction, including menus from Bobby Flay and Marcus Samuelsson. Whether you use it depends on how you feel about tech-driven food halls, but the format is genuinely new to this side of the metroplex.
On Carroll Avenue, Ferah Tex-Med, a modern Mediterranean concept with a Texas twist, is now open next to Nothing Bundt Cakes, and Nikko opened next to Trader Joe's with sushi and Asian cuisine while Stella Trattoria opened on State Street across from Market by Macy's with Italian.
Restaurant Week overlaps with the Ascension opening window in a useful way. Truluck's is participating in the 30th annual DFW Restaurant Week from August 6 through September 7, 2026, with a three-course menu at $59 per guest, and 20% of every meal supports the North Texas Food Bank. That is a full month where a Town Square dinner comes in below what the à la carte order runs the rest of the year.
The Fall Calendar Worth Blocking Off
Once the September calendar arrives, the city's event slate does more work for the district than any single store opening.
- Celebrate Southlake, September 12. Held from 2 to 7 PM at Rustin Pavilion, free, hosted by the City of Southlake, this is the city's birthday event and showcases local nonprofits, civic groups, and community organizations.
- Southlake Hispanic Heritage Celebration. A September event featuring mariachi, Peruvian folklórico, salsa and bachata, plus a marketplace of Hispanic and Latino artisans and a kid-friendly zone, free and open to everyone with free parking.
- Oktoberfest. The Southlake Chamber of Commerce hosts Oktoberfest in the heart of Town Square each October with music, food, shopping, and festive entertainment.
The scheduling is not accidental. Celebrate Southlake on the 12th lands right in the window Ascension has been targeting for opening. If you like to build a Saturday around a coffee, a walk through Rustin Pavilion, and dinner in a new Town Square room, the whole afternoon can be planned inside a six-block radius.
The Read for Residents
The reason to treat this year's tenant list as more than a shopping headline is that it tells you where Town Square is heading. A 130-acre, 120-plus tenant open-air center owned by a national REIT does not fill three "first-in-Tarrant-County" leases in one cycle unless leasing believes the trade area has permanently repriced. The tenants coming in now are the ones that used to require a Dallas trip.
For a homeowner, that has two practical effects. Weekend routines get shorter because more of the errands and dinners you were driving out for now exist inside city limits. And the amenity story attached to Southlake, the one out-of-town family members ask about at Thanksgiving, quietly upgrades without a single new master plan being announced.
If you have not walked the State Street stretch in a few weeks, park in either the East or West Garage north of Town Hall, take Grand Avenue east, and pay attention to the storefronts between Alo and Tyler's. That is the block doing most of the work this fall.
Talk to Us
Whether you are settling deeper into a home you already own or thinking about your next chapter inside the same zip code, the texture of a neighborhood is the part that never shows up on a portal. That's the part we spend our week walking. Selling Southlake is owner-led, and we are always happy to sit down over a coffee at 100 State Street once the door is open. Request a Concierge Consultation whenever you're ready.