Walk through Broadway Plaza on any evening this month and you'll see paper still taped over a few windows. SKIMS signage went up near Nordstrom earlier this summer, promising a late-summer opening that hasn't quite arrived. A few doors down, New Balance has moved into the spot where Allbirds used to be. Past the fountain, gorjana just moved into a bigger spot. And behind all of it, construction fencing has started going up around the old Neiman Marcus building, the one that has sat empty, in one form or another, since 2021.
None of this reads as a single event. It reads as a shopping center mid-sentence. And that's the point worth understanding before the plaza throws itself a 75th birthday party on October 17: the anniversary isn't a look back at what Broadway Plaza has been. It's landing in the middle of the clearest repositioning the center has attempted in years, and the tenant list tells you exactly which direction it's moving.
What Left, What Arrived, and Why the Swap Matters
Broadway Plaza has always turned over storefronts. What's different about the last twelve months is the pattern in what's leaving versus what's replacing it.
Janie & Jack, the Makers Market, and Sur La Table all vacated a large multi-suite space near Nordstrom. That's a children's clothing brand, a curated goods concept, and a kitchenware retailer, three different categories aimed at families and home cooks, cleared out at once. Taking over that combined footprint: SKIMS, Kim Kardashian's shapewear and loungewear label, in a single dedicated storefront. Nordstrom is currently hiring a designated Skims sales associate specifically for the location, which tells you the center expects this to be a destination brand, not a quiet addition.
A few doors over, Aveda has moved out of its spot to make way for Rowan, an ear-piercing and jewelry studio built around the idea of piercing as a planned, almost ceremonial experience rather than a walk-in errand. Saje Natural Wellness gave up its space to 7th Avenue, a modular furniture brand. Läderach, the Swiss chocolate maker, has also opened at the plaza. Allbirds closed on a Sunday in January, and New Balance has since moved into that box.
Here's the shape of it laid out plainly:
| Departed | Arrived | What the swap signals |
|---|---|---|
| Janie & Jack, the Makers Market, Sur La Table | SKIMS (expected late summer 2026) | Three family-oriented categories consolidated into one premium lifestyle brand |
| Aveda | Rowan piercing studio | Everyday wellness traded for a boutique, appointment-driven experience |
| Saje Natural Wellness | 7th Avenue (modular furniture) | Wellness retail gives ground to home design |
| Allbirds | New Balance | A lateral move within athletic footwear, no repositioning here |
| Former Neiman Marcus (vacant since 2021) | RH "compound" (construction starting mid-2026, opening targeted for early 2028) | The center's biggest bet, a multi-year luxury anchor project |
Read across that table and the lateral moves, like Allbirds to New Balance, are the exception. Most of what's happening is consolidation: fewer, larger tenants replacing multiple smaller ones, and the incoming names skew toward brands built on experience and price point rather than everyday utility. A shopping center doesn't do that by accident. Macerich, which owns Broadway Plaza, is making a legible bet on what shoppers in this market will pay a premium for.
The Anchor Story Is the Real Tell
Storefront swaps are the visible layer. The real signal is what's happening to the building that used to be Neiman Marcus.
That department store closed in January 2021 after nearly a decade as the center's luxury anchor. Crate & Barrel moved into the space temporarily in 2022, then left in 2023 for its own permanent store elsewhere in the plaza, leaving the building empty again. For a while, nobody knew what was coming next.
The answer, confirmed earlier this year: Restoration Hardware. The company already operates a smaller store on Mt. Diablo Boulevard, but this would be something larger, described as a multi-building "compound" in the same vein as RH's Palo Alto flagship, which includes a full-service restaurant on its third floor. Construction was set to begin in mid-2026. The grand opening isn't expected until early 2028, nearly seven years after Neiman Marcus first went dark.
That timeline matters. This isn't a quick tenant swap. It's a multi-year capital commitment on the center's most visible corner, and it lines up with a move Macerich already made a few years earlier: converting the former Macy's Men's footprint into a Life Time athletic club, an upscale sports facility that opened in September 2023 after construction delays. Between Life Time and the coming RH compound, the plaza's two biggest anchor bets of the last five years both point toward the same customer, someone willing to pay for a premium version of fitness and home furnishing rather than a discount one.
Meanwhile, Pinstripes, the bowling-and-bocce entertainment concept that opened at the plaza, closed permanently in September 2025 during a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, and that space is still sitting vacant. A family entertainment tenant left and hasn't been replaced yet. Whether that space becomes another premium bet or something more accessible will say a lot about how far this repositioning goes.
An Anniversary Party Timed to a Half-Finished Building
Broadway Plaza opened in 1951, and this fall it's marking 75 years with a street event called "Once Upon a Street: Broadway Plaza Turns 75," set for October 17 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. It follows a related event on September 19 called "Once Upon a Street: Health & Harmony." Both are free, walkable, daytime gatherings, the kind of programming a shopping center runs to remind residents it's still a gathering place and not just a construction zone.
The timing is what makes it interesting. The center is throwing its birthday party while a chunk of its own footprint sits behind fencing, waiting on a luxury furniture anchor that won't open for another year and a half. If you attend, you'll be walking past the visible evidence of a shopping center in transition while it asks you to celebrate its history. Both things can be true. The plaza that turns 75 this fall is not going to look like the plaza that turns 76.
The Counterpoint, Two Miles Away
Not everything about a Thursday night in this part of town has gotten more expensive or more curated. Ruth Bancroft Garden, the three and a half acre dry garden on Bancroft Road, has spent much of this summer running its Sunset Sessions concert series on Thursday evenings. Admission to the plaza area and the live music itself is free. Beer comes from series sponsor Headlands Brewing, food has come from vendors like D'vine Graze, and the garden encourages people to bring lawn chairs and blankets, though outside alcohol isn't permitted. If you want to wander the actual garden and its succulent collection, that requires paid admission, but the concert and plaza access do not.
It's a useful contrast to what's happening a short drive away at Broadway Plaza. One local gathering spot is consolidating storefronts around premium national brands and building a luxury anchor with a multi-year timeline. Another is running a free, bring-your-own-chair concert series with a local brewery as the headline sponsor. Walnut Creek isn't uniformly drifting upmarket. Its shopping center is, deliberately, while its garden keeps doing what it's always done.
What This Actually Means for Fall
If you live here, the practical takeaway is simple. The next few months will bring a genuinely new mix of stores to Broadway Plaza, not just replacements but a shift in what kind of shopping the center is built around. The anniversary event on October 17 is worth attending as a snapshot of that moment, half celebration, half construction site. And if a quieter, less curated evening out sounds better some Thursday, Ruth Bancroft Garden's concert series is still the more accessible version of the same idea: people gathering outdoors in this part of town, just without the price tag attached.
Neither story is really about nostalgia. Both are about what this stretch of Walnut Creek is choosing to become, in real time, storefront by storefront.
If you're watching how a neighborhood's commercial identity shifts and wondering what it means for property values nearby, that's exactly the kind of on-the-ground detail Joujou Chawla Real Estate tracks across Walnut Creek and the wider Tri-Valley. Get in touch if you'd like a read on what's happening in your particular corner of it.
