On Thursday night, GolfTRK throws a grand opening celebration inside a golf simulator flagship built where part of a department store used to be. On Friday, the same company holds its official ribbon-cutting ceremony a few steps away. On Saturday, Harmon Park fills with lawn chairs and horn sections for JazzFest, the neighborhood's long-running late-summer tradition. All three land within a five-minute walk of each other, at the corner that sat behind plywood for most of the last five years.
None of the three organizers planned this together. GolfTRK picked September because its build-out finally cleared. The city picked September because JazzFest always lands there. The old Macy's redevelopment picked September because that is simply how long it took to get tenants through their doors. The coincidence is the actual story here. This is the first week the former Macy's site functions as three separate reasons to show up, instead of one long construction update.
The Three Nights, In Order
- Thursday, Sept. 10: GolfTRK's Grand Opening Celebration at 7068 Mission Road. The event includes a $5,000 hole-in-one contest and closest-to-the-hole competitions, staged inside a facility built around eight TrackMan bays and a PuttView putting green the company says is the largest of its kind in the country.
- Friday, Sept. 11: The formal ribbon-cutting ceremony. Founder and CEO Alex Reed will be on hand, along with general manager Sally Krystyn, who joined GolfTRK in August after more than 30 years in the golf industry.
- Saturday, Sept. 12: JazzFest returns to Harmon Park from 3 to 9 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults and free for anyone under 18. Bring a blanket or lawn chair. Outside food and drinks are not allowed, but food trucks and a cash bar will be set up on site.
A Flagship That Outgrew Its Own Blueprint
When GolfTRK first announced Prairie Village as the site of its flagship and corporate headquarters back in February, the plan called for 6,700 square feet at 7064 Mission Road. By midsummer the company had picked up more space next door, and the projected footprint had grown to nearly 11,000 square feet. The Sept. 2 announcement puts the finished facility at 15,000 square feet, more than double what was originally drawn on paper.
"We put real capital into this on purpose, because we wanted a real flagship," said Matt Williams, co-founder of Albatross Golf, the company behind GolfTRK, in comments to Startland News about the buildout.
Growth like that, in the middle of construction, on a corner that sat vacant or scaffolded since Macy's closed in 2020, says something about how the math on this redevelopment changed once the first tenant proved it could work. Big Grove Brewery opened its 13,000-square-foot taproom on the building's south side in May, the first business to occupy the former department store since it went dark. Its soft opening reportedly generated five-figure sales in a single day, which is part of why a second tenant felt comfortable signing for more room than it originally planned. GolfTRK is that second tenant. A relocated Hen House, expected to open on the lower level later this month, will be the third.
The whole project, a two-story rebuild of what had been a three-story department store, carries a reported price tag near $26 million. That is the kind of number that explains why a shopping center works this hard to fill three tenants inside one building rather than leasing it out piecemeal.
What Actually Changes for Someone Who Lives Here
If you already shop at the Shops of Prairie Village, the parking lot has been the real story for well over a year, longer than any single storefront. That does not improve this week. Big Grove's dinner crowd, which keeps the taproom running 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily, combined with GolfTRK's grand-opening traffic and a $5,000 contest drawing spectators, means the lot around 71st and Mission will run tighter than usual Thursday and Friday evenings. Saturday shifts the crowd two blocks over to Harmon Park, where free parking is available at Shawnee Mission East, the Prairie Village Pool, Mission Bible Church, and Community of Christ Bible Church.
Grocery routines are untouched for now. The current Hen House at the Shops is expected to keep operating in its existing space until the new store on the lower level opens. That new store is planned at 40,000 square feet, more than double the size of the one it replaces, with an expanded produce, meat, and bakery section along with a cheese island and market grille. Nothing about weekly grocery runs changes until that swap actually happens.
The Turnover Underneath the Openings
Grand openings are the visible half of what a five-year redevelopment does to a shopping center. The other half shows up in the businesses that could not wait it out. Scoobie, a boutique that had operated at the Shops for seven years, closed for good earlier this year. Owner Sarah Jabbour pointed to 17 months of ongoing construction that made continuing as a storefront untenable, and the store's online shop closed along with it. Village Hairstyling closed in August after 77 years at the center. One of its longtime barbers relocated to Lenexa and reopened as Old Town Barber, keeping the same staff and the same clientele who followed him a few miles down the road.
Not every move at the center was a casualty. Clairvaux, a locally owned shop, relocated into the former Chico's space this year after six years at the Shops at Fairway. Founder Joni Johnson said she wanted a center with more traffic and more of a community feel, the kind of foot traffic a shopping center that draws an estimated 2.5 million visits a year can offer once its long-vacant anchor problem finally gets solved.
The Week as a Preview, Not a Finish Line
Three tenants opening in one building over five months is not a finished redevelopment. It is the middle of one. The landlord told the Prairie Village City Council late last year that the building was designed to hold still more tenants beyond the ones now confirmed, so more storefronts than the three open this week are still likely on the way. What changes this week is not the finished product. It is the first time a resident can walk from a golf simulator bay to a brewery patio to a jazz festival lawn chair without passing a single stretch of plywood along the way.
That is worth knowing whether you are heading to JazzFest on Saturday or just trying to find a parking spot on Thursday night.
Prairie Village keeps changing at street level, one storefront and one construction phase at a time. If a week like this has you wondering what it means for your own block, or you are simply curious what your home might be worth in a neighborhood that keeps adding reasons to stay, Paul Michael Homes tracks these changes as closely as the shops themselves and is glad to talk through what any of it means for you.
