Drive Kendall Drive from the Turnpike to The Falls and you'll pass at least four storefronts that sat empty, tired, or unremarkable for years and are now doing something else entirely. Not new construction. Not a rezoning fight. Just a stretch of road quietly filling in the gaps it had been carrying since before the pandemic.
That's the part worth noticing. Kendall's commercial corridor isn't expanding outward this year so much as it's healing inward. A shuttered Japanese restaurant, a Toys "R" Us that closed in 2018, a Bloomingdale's that went dark in 2020. All three now have new occupants, and all three tell you something different about who's betting on this particular stretch of Kendall right now.
The addresses that finally got tenants
Here's the short version, block by block:
| Address (approx.) | What used to be there | What's there now or coming |
|---|---|---|
| 13750 SW 88th St | Fujiya Japanese Restaurant | Lala's Burgers, standalone, opened December 2025 |
| 12536 SW 88th St | Vacant/unconfirmed prior tenant | Kung Fu Chicken, permit filed, "coming soon" |
| 8789 SW 117th Ave | Toys "R" Us, closed 2018 | Tesla showroom and service center, late 2026 |
| The Falls (Bloomingdale's wing) | Bloomingdale's, closed March 2020 | Life Time Fitness, open since August 2023 |
None of these are speculative retail plays chasing a growth narrative. They're specific businesses taking specific addresses that had been sitting vacant for anywhere from one to eight years. That's a different story than "Kendall is booming." It's closer to "Kendall finally has takers for the space it already had."
Two restaurant groups, one zip code, back to back
The clearest evidence of that is what's happening with Day One Hospitality, the group behind Apocalypse BBQ. They didn't start in a storefront at all. Apocalypse BBQ began as a Tuesday-only backyard pop-up, grew into a 190-seat restaurant inside Kendall Village Shopping Center by March 2025, and then spun off a standalone burger concept, Lala's Burgers, into the old Fujiya space at 13750 SW 88th Street. Owners Jeff and Laura Budnechky opened the doors this past December, and the demand was enough that the location sold its own bottled barbecue sauce before the restaurant itself was even finished. The Kendall location gets its own menu additions too: chicken sandwiches, hot dogs on buns proofed in-house, and a craft beer list built around South Florida breweries like Tripping Animals, The Tank Brewing Co., and Wynwood Brewing Company. A vinyl listening area and board games are going in as well, aimed squarely at making the space a neighborhood hangout rather than a quick-service stop.
That's one restaurant group placing a second, larger bet on the same few blocks inside of a year. It's not the only one. Pura Vida, the Miami-born health food chain known for avocado toast and açaí bowls, opened its second Kendall location this summer at The Palms at Town & Country, and opening day drew a line out the door. Ichimi, the ramen shop with roots in Coral Gables, opened its third Miami-area location in Kendall as well. And Kung Fu Chicken, a Taiwanese fast-casual concept built around fried chicken cutlets and bubble tea, filed permits for a new spot at 12536 SW 88th Street, with its own site confirming a location is "coming soon."
Four different operators, four different cuisines, all choosing the same short corridor within months of each other. That's not a coincidence of timing. It's a signal that restaurant groups doing real due diligence on foot traffic and rent are landing on the same conclusion about this specific stretch of road.
The mall stopped competing on stores and started competing on hours
The Falls has spent the last several years quietly redefining what it's for. When Bloomingdale's closed for good in March 2020, the space didn't sit empty for long by mall standards. Life Time, the fitness and wellness club, opened there in August 2023. Then, in a renovation covered by the Miami Herald in December 2025, the mall's Regal theater reinvented itself as a dine-and-recline format, the kind of upgrade built for people who want a night out without driving further east. The Falls also runs a recurring event series, monthly fitness classes and retailer activations on the third Thursday of the month, scheduled through December 2026.
None of that reads like a shopping mall trying to lure back department store traffic. It reads like a property manager who noticed people were already coming for Shake Shack, sweetgreen, and Regal, and decided to give them more reasons to stay for a few hours instead of thirty minutes. If you've written off The Falls as the place you go once a season for Macy's, it's worth knowing that's no longer really what it's built around.
The empty box on 117th finally gets a tenant
The most visible sign of Kendall's infill moment isn't a restaurant at all. It's a car showroom. Tesla is building a 45,255-square-foot showroom and service center at 8789 SW 117th Avenue, on land owned by Kimco Realty inside The Palms at Town & Country. That address has been a dead zone since Toys "R" Us closed there in 2018, sitting across the street from the main shopping center for the better part of a decade. Unlike Tesla's smaller mall kiosk showrooms elsewhere, this one combines a showroom with a full service center, meaning it's designed for people to actually bring their cars in, not just look at them. The opening is slated for late 2026.
Eight years is a long time for a corner lot on a major corridor to sit unused. Whatever else you think about that stretch of Kendall Drive, the fact that it took a company the size of Tesla to finally fill that specific box tells you something about how selective national retailers have been about this market until recently.
If you want a break from all of it
Not everything worth knowing about Kendall this year is happening in a parking lot. A few miles north of the SW 88th corridor, Kendall Indian Hammocks Park at 11395 SW 79th Street offers the version of a weekend that has nothing to do with a shopping center. The park's nature trail runs about 0.7 miles through a tropical hardwood hammock thick with wild coffee, willow bustic, and mastic, the kind of shaded, quiet walk that feels a lot further from the Turnpike than it actually is. Admission is free, the trail is open from sunrise to sunset, and the park is managed by Miami-Dade County. Beyond the trail, there's a 14,000-square-foot Action Sports Plaza built for skateboarding, styled after spots like Love Park in Philadelphia, a disc golf course that wraps the edge of the hammock, and five covered picnic shelters that seat up to 80 people each if you're planning something larger than a Sunday walk.
It's not new. It's not part of this year's wave of openings. But it's the kind of place that's easy to forget is sitting there for free while everyone's attention is on the new burger spot or the Tesla build-out, and it's worth putting back on the list.
What this actually adds up to
Kendall isn't getting louder this year so much as it's getting less empty. A backyard pop-up turned into two restaurants on the same road. A shuttered Japanese spot became a neighborhood burger hangout. A dead Toys "R" Us is about to become a car dealership doing real service work, not just window shopping. A department store that couldn't survive 2020 is now a gym people actually use. None of these are flashy development announcements. They're small, specific businesses deciding that the empty box down the street from you was worth taking a chance on.
If you live here, that's the thing worth watching over the next few months: not whether Kendall is changing, but which of these still-vacant corners near you gets its own version of the same story next.
If you're weighing what any of this means for property values or timing on your own street, the Jonathan Gilman team knows this corridor block by block and can talk through what it's actually worth to you.
