For years, the second floor of the old Macy's at 71st and Mission was the part of Prairie Village nobody walked through. It was the dark rectangle you parked beside. On a Friday evening this August, it is where the noise is coming from.
Three significant restaurants have opened in this city inside of three months. Big Grove Brewery on May 21, Casa Ama in June, Flower Child earlier this month. If you live here, you already know that much. What is less obvious is that these are not three separate pieces of good luck. Trace them backward and they all begin with the same unglamorous fact: a grocery store ran out of room.
A grocery store outgrew its box, and everything followed
The Hen House at 6950 Mission Road runs about 16,000 square feet. Mike Beal, chief financial officer of parent company Balls Food Stores, told the Prairie Village City Council at the January 2025 wall-breaking that a store that size is very, very inefficient in the grocery business. The replacement being built into the first floor of 7070 Mission Road will be roughly 40,000 square feet, more than double. It adds a cheese island, a market grille, fresh sushi, floral, and a large indoor-outdoor cafe.
"This is going to be the best grocery store anywhere close to this in Kansas City."
That is Beal's own framing, and whether or not it holds up, the ambition is the point. To fit a store that size, First Washington Realty had to take the three-story Macy's building down to two stories and rebuild it. Doing so created upper-floor commercial space that simply did not exist in Prairie Village before. The $26 million-plus redevelopment, carried out by GRI Prairie Village LLC under First Washington's management, is the reason there is now a brewery where there used to be a closed department store floor.
So the sequence runs: grocer needs a bigger box, landlord rebuilds the box, the rebuild produces new upstairs space, and tenants who had no reason to look at this intersection five years ago start signing leases. Bryan Farrell, Big Grove's director of marketing, told the Johnson County Post the company spent roughly two years touring the Kansas City and Omaha markets before choosing this spot, citing the neighborhood feel and the pedestrian traffic its leadership watched in the dead of winter.
Two centers, a dozen blocks apart, one landlord
Here is a distinction worth getting right, because the local shorthand blurs it. The Shops of Prairie Village sit at 71st and Mission. Corinth Square and Corinth Quarter sit at 83rd and Mission. Both are First Washington properties, both have been under construction, and both are producing openings at the same time. That is why it feels like the whole city is torn up at once.
The 83rd Street cluster got its own phase-two facelift, with exterior work on the buildings near Panera already finished as of late 2025. Club Pilates was set to take the space next door to Panera. Brookside Barkery & Bath, the family-owned pet retailer run by Brian and Jennifer Murphy that groomed and bathed more than 60,000 dogs last year, has a store coming to 3935 W. 83rd St.
The three new restaurants split across both centers:
| Where | Address | Hours | The thing to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Grove Brewery | 7060 Mission Rd, upper level | Taproom Sun–Wed 11 a.m.–11 p.m., Thu–Sat 11 a.m.–midnight | Kitchen closes two hours before the taproom does. No reservations, ever. |
| Casa Ama | 8228 Mission Rd, Corinth Square | Sun 11–8, Mon–Thu 11–9, Fri–Sat 11–10 | The former Salty Iguana space, from the founder of Billie's Grocery. |
| Flower Child | 3915 W. 83rd St., Corinth Square | Seven days, 11 a.m.–9 p.m. | First location in Kansas and the first in the metro. |
Casa Ama deserves a note beyond its address. Robin Krause, a Prairie Village native and the founder of Billie's Grocery, took the Salty Iguana space after that restaurant closed in February 2025. Her son worked there as his first job. She built the menu with chef Anourom Thomson of Strang Hall's Anousone and director of operations Rico Hernandez, and ordered the cast iron skillet burners after watching them work at a restaurant in Austin. The street corn Caesar is the sleeper on the menu.
Flower Child is the 45th location of a Sam Fox concept, the same restaurateur behind North Italia in Leawood. The first 200 guests on opening day left with a tote and a sunflower bouquet from White Farmhouse Flowers in Parkville.
The parking situation, told straight
This is the part the announcements skip. Big Grove says it plainly on its own taproom page: the main lot at the Shops has limited spaces and fills up quickly at peak hours. The overflow you want is at the southeast corner of Mission Road and 71st Street, with the entrance off Mission. It is a short walk and it is reliably emptier.
Two other operating details save you a wasted trip. Big Grove seats first come, first served. No reservations, no call-ahead, no remote waitlist, and that holds for parties of ten or more as well. And the kitchen closes before the taproom does, at 9 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday and 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, so a 9:30 arrival on a Tuesday gets you a beer and nothing else.
Tenants quoted in KCUR's reporting this spring expect the crowding to continue until the Hen House swap is complete. Plan around it rather than being surprised by it.
Two operators, two opposite bets
The honest version of this story includes a closing. Scoobie left the Shops after seven years and shut its online store as well. Owner Sarah Jabbour pointed to a transformer fire in early 2025 and then seventeen months of construction that blocked entrances, describing days with almost no foot traffic. Redevelopment is not free, and she paid for this one.
Running the other direction: Clairvaux relocated from the Shops at Fairway into the former Chico's space at 3944 W. 69th Terrace. Founder Joni Johnson said she needed more room and wanted a center with more traffic and more of a community hub feel. A small operator moving toward the construction, with her own capital, while another was forced out by it. Both things are true about the same twelve months.
Saturday, September 12 at Harmon Park
The Jazz Festival lands the Saturday after Labor Day this year, running 3 to 9 p.m. at Harmon Park, 77th Place and Delmar Street. It has been going since 2010 and is presented with the Prairie Village Foundation.
The logistics, from the city's own listing:
- Admission is $5 for adults, free for anyone 18 and under
- Blankets and lawn chairs are welcome
- No outside food or beverages. Food trucks are on site, plus soda, beer, and wine
- Service dogs only
- Free parking at Shawnee Mission East, the Prairie Village Pool, Mission Bible Church, and Community of Christ Bible Church
- ADA parking and drop-off at City Hall, 7700 Mission Road
The city has listed the 2026 lineup as still to come, so check the calendar before you go.
The part that hasn't happened yet
Everything above is prologue. The change with the most consequence for your daily routine is still ahead.
When Hen House vacates 6950 Mission Road, First Washington has said that Mission Road-facing space will likely be carved into five or six separate tenants. That is five or six new front doors on the block, on top of a grocery store that just doubled in size, on top of a brewery that did five figures in sales during its soft opening alone. The traffic pattern you have gotten used to over the past year is not the finished product. It is the intermission.
Also landing shortly: Albatross Golf is targeting a September opening for its national headquarters and GolfTRK flagship at 7068 Mission Road, a nearly 11,000-square-foot space that grew about 3,000 square feet beyond the original plan. Six Trackman bays, a PuttView setup, roughly 1,500 square feet of indoor short-game area, and a PGA professional on site. Founding members receive a custom Hanna putter.
For context on scale, the Shops of Prairie Village lists 35 shops, 14 restaurants, and 2.5 million visits a year. The long-standing anchors have not gone anywhere. Story, where chef Carl Thorne-Thomsen has been a James Beard semifinalist, and Café Provence are both still doing what they have always done. What has changed is that the evening center of gravity moved up a floor and a few hundred feet south, into a building most of us stopped looking at years ago.
If watching your own commercial core get rebuilt has you thinking about your own four walls, whether that is a move up, a move down, or just an honest read on where things stand, I am always glad to talk it through without any pressure attached. Krause & Home works both sides of the state line, and I would rather help you think clearly than hurry you along. Let's Connect.
