For most of the past year, the northeast corner of Hunt Highway and Gary Road has looked like a construction photo that never updates: orange fencing, graded dirt, a WinCo Foods sign standing alone in a mostly empty lot. If you've driven past it on a grocery run, you've probably stopped noticing it. That's about to change, and not gradually. Four national retailers are opening at Skyline Ranch Marketplace within the same three-week stretch this August, and the timing tells you something the storefronts alone don't.
Four grand openings, three weeks
Here's what's landing on the calendar this month, according to the community-run tracker at SanTanValley.com:
- Five Below opened August 7
- Ulta Beauty is opening sometime this month
- Marshalls holds its grand opening August 27
- HomeGoods holds its grand opening August 27
That's not a slow rollout. That's a developer clearing four ribbon-cuttings inside one calendar page, and it usually means one of two things: either construction finished faster than planned, or the leasing team deliberately staged openings to hit back-to-school shopping season while foot traffic is already elevated from school supply runs. Given that Marshalls and HomeGoods are sharing the exact same grand opening date, the second explanation looks more likely. Retailers coordinate openings like this when they want combined marketing spend and a single big weekend rather than four quiet Tuesdays spread across the fall.
The anchor that made the rest possible
None of this happens without a grocery store first. WinCo Foods broke ground on its 10-acre parcel after buying the larger site from Miller Global in 2023, and it opened September 9, 2025, just under a year before this month's wave of grand openings. That's the pattern in retail development: the grocery anchor goes in first because it's the one tenant that draws daily trips regardless of what else is built around it. Everything after that, from Marshalls to Five Below, is betting on traffic the grocery store already proved exists.
Home Depot, Panda Express, Arby's, and Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers were already open before this month, which is why the corner has quietly functioned as a "get in, get out" stop for a while. What's different now is that Skyline Ranch Marketplace is becoming a place people plan a stop around, not just pass through on the way to somewhere else.
What's still under a tarp
Not everything is opening at once. Splitting the remaining lineup by timing shows how much runway this project still has:
Coming later this year:
- Cold Beers & Cheeseburgers, taking over the former Denny's location on the northeast corner
- EOS Fitness, targeted for September
- PetSmart, expected late in the year
Coming in 2027:
- Chick-fil-A, slated for summer 2027
Under construction now, no confirmed date:
- In-N-Out
The full build-out isn't expected to wrap until 2027, according to reporting in the Queen Creek Independent, which also confirmed the project totals 165,500 square feet across the 31-acre site. As of spring 2025, the center was already about 85% pre-leased, per AZBEX's coverage of the project, which is a high number for a shopping center that was still mostly under a tarp at the time. It tells you the leasing team wasn't struggling to fill space more than a year out. They were staggering the openings on purpose.
The ZON closes the loop
The part of this development that changes daily routines the most isn't the big-box row. It's a smaller mixed-use section called The ZON, which is bringing in a cluster of everyday-errand tenants rather than another anchor store: Tasteful Tailgates, a seafood, steak, and sports bar concept with roughly 250 seats inside and another 50 on a misted patio, along with Einstein Bros. Bagels, Panera, Smoothie King, V's Barber Shop, America's Best Contacts & Eyeglasses, The Joint, AT&T, and a dental office. That combination, haircut, phone plan, bagels, chiropractic visit, dinner reservation, is what turns a shopping center into something residents actually route their week around instead of visiting once a month.
The same month, a few minutes away
Here's the piece that explains why this is happening now instead of two years from now. A few minutes from Skyline Ranch Marketplace, at the southeast corner of Bella Vista and Gantzel, a 272-unit apartment complex called Tecoma Square opens its doors today, August 10, right in the middle of the same August that's bringing Five Below, Ulta, Marshalls, and HomeGoods online. That's not a coincidence either. Retail follows rooftops, and when a developer times a 272-unit lease-up to land in the same month as four store openings a short drive away, it's a signal that the population math behind this corner has already been run. Marketing materials from Pennant Development, the firm developing the marketplace, cite an average household income above $84,700 across the trade area and note that the Walmart across the street already ranks among the top ten in the Phoenix metro for customer visits. Whether or not you take a developer's own numbers at face value, the fact that a new apartment complex and four national retailers are landing in the same month is hard evidence that the intersection has crossed some threshold. It stopped being a construction site and started being a destination people are actively planning around.
What actually changes if you live here
A few practical notes for anyone who lives near Hunt Highway and Gary Road and doesn't want to get caught off guard this month:
Grand opening weekends draw crowds that don't reflect normal traffic. Marshalls and HomeGoods sharing an August 27 opening date means that specific Thursday, and likely the weekend after it, will bring heavier parking lot congestion than you're used to at this corner. If you're planning a Home Depot run or a WinCo trip that week, an early morning or a Tuesday afternoon will save you the wait.
The Skyline Ranch build-out is a multi-year project, not a single event. With Chick-fil-A not landing until summer 2027 and In-N-Out still under construction with no announced date, this corner is going to keep changing in visible phases for at least another year. That's worth knowing if you're the type of resident who likes to track what's coming rather than be surprised by it.
And if you're weighing whether this kind of commercial growth changes anything about your own property, that's a fair question to ask a local agent rather than guess at. Retail buildout at this scale, paired with new apartment supply nearby, tends to shift how appraisers and buyers think about a corridor over a two-to-three year window, and the answer depends on exactly where your street sits relative to the corner.
That's the kind of local read Braden AZ Homes tracks block by block across San Tan Valley, not from a spreadsheet, but from watching which corners fill in first and why. If you're curious what a development like this means for your own home's value, you can start with a free home valuation or browse more on the San Tan Valley neighborhood page to see what else is shifting nearby.
