Drive past the old LA Fitness at Llanerch Shopping Center on West Chester Pike and you'd assume it's been sitting empty since the gym closed. It hasn't. Amazon signed a lease there, built out a full Amazon Fresh grocery store behind the windows, and then, weeks before opening day, walked away from it. The company kept paying rent on that empty building for roughly five years before finally letting the landlord out of the deal earlier this year.
That's the part of Delaware County's retail story that doesn't show up in most roundups. A storefront can look dead for years while someone is still quietly paying to hold it. A restaurant announced with a name and an address can turn into a completely different restaurant before it ever opens. If you've been reading "coming soon" headlines about Delaware County dining and shopping and wondering why half of them never seem to actually happen, you're not missing anything. The plans really have been changing underneath the coverage.
The Storefront Nobody Believed Would Fill
Llanerch Shopping Center sits at 403 West Chester Pike in Havertown, owned by Berwyn-based Brandolini Cos. Before Amazon Fresh, the space had been vacant since an LA Fitness closed there a year or two before the pandemic. Amazon signed on shortly after, built the store out completely, and then had second thoughts just before launch. Rather than break the lease, the company let the space sit dark and kept the rent flowing to Brandolini for years.
That changed this July, when Sprouts Farmers Market signed a lease for the same 29,500-square-foot space. It's Sprouts' first store in Delaware County and its 13th in the Philadelphia region, part of a push toward 40 new locations nationwide by the end of 2026. The opening is targeted for the first quarter of 2027, so this isn't a this-fall story. It's a marker that the space finally has a real tenant with a real plan, after half a decade of an active lease attached to nothing.
If you live near Llanerch and have written that corner off, the useful update isn't "a grocery store is coming." It's that an empty storefront in this county doesn't always mean a dead one. Sometimes it means a company is still on the hook for it and simply hasn't found the right exit.
The Restaurant That Changed Before It Opened
Fearless Restaurants, the group behind Testa Rossa in Glen Mills, Triple Crown, Autograph Brasserie, and White Dog Cafe, spent more than two years with a second Testa Rossa planned for the former Bertucci's at 523 W. Lancaster Avenue in Wayne. Coverage as recent as January of this year was still describing that Testa Rossa location as opening in Wayne this summer.
It isn't happening. In May, Fearless confirmed the Wayne space is becoming something else entirely: Martini & Roz, a contemporary Italian concept named for Martin and Roslyn Grims, the parents and grandparents of the family running the restaurant group. The new build is considerably bigger than a second Testa Rossa would have been. It's designed to seat more than 300 guests across roughly 7,500 square feet, with a main dining room, a bar, a tasting counter where diners can watch pasta and pizza come together, a private dining room, and outdoor seating. Philadelphia firm Rohe Creative is handling the design, and regional executive chef Merick Devine is leading the kitchen. The company has pointed to the success of its nearby Triple Crown as the reason for the pivot, betting that Main Line diners have an appetite for something more immersive than a second casual Italian-American spot. The current target is late summer or early fall 2026.
What makes this worth knowing isn't just that the restaurant changed. It's that the change happened after the lease was signed and construction was already underway on Lancaster Avenue, and the public story didn't catch up for months. If you're the kind of resident who tracks what's happening a few blocks from home, the lesson is to treat any "opening this summer" headline about a specific storefront as a snapshot, not a guarantee.
What You Can Actually Walk Into This Month
Not everything in this stretch of the county is still on paper. A few storefronts changed hands and opened for real over the past two months.
The Buttery, the Malvern bakery-cafe known for its pastries and sourdough, opened a Main Line location at 836 W. Lancaster Avenue in Bryn Mawr with 82 indoor seats. It runs daily service from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the kitchen closing at 3 and grab-and-go items covering the rest of the afternoon.
At Newtown Square's Ellis Preserve, Cleavers, the Center City cheesesteak shop, grand-opened its second location at 103 Squire Drive, serving the same cheesesteaks, chicken cheesesteaks, burgers, and milkshakes that built its city following. Ellis Preserve has been filling in steadily this year: Napa Kitchen and Wine opened there back in early February and has now been running for more than six months.
And in Glen Mills, The Coffee Station took over 1117 Smithbridge Road, a building that had housed Meghan's Restaurant for 27 years before this changeover. The new operator kept the space in the breakfast-and-lunch business, with omelets, pancakes, burgers, and hoagies replacing whatever Meghan's regulars used to order.
Here's a quick view of where things actually stand as of this month:
| Location | Business | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Havertown, Llanerch Shopping Center | Sprouts Farmers Market | Lease signed, opening targeted Q1 2027 |
| Wayne, 523 W. Lancaster Ave | Martini & Roz | Under construction, targeting late summer/fall 2026 |
| Newtown Square, Ellis Preserve | Cleavers | Open now |
| Newtown Square, Ellis Preserve | Napa Kitchen and Wine | Open since early February |
| Bryn Mawr, 836 W. Lancaster Ave | The Buttery | Open now |
| Glen Mills, 1117 Smithbridge Rd | The Coffee Station | Open now |
| Glen Mills, 1110 Baltimore Pike | Boondocks Bar and Grill | Still awaiting opening |
The One Still Waiting
That last row deserves its own mention, because it's the clearest example of a plan that hasn't caught up to its own timeline. Philip and Kate Ferro, who own Chadds Ford Tavern and run Five Star Restaurant Group's other suburban spots, including Augustine Tavern, Main Line Tavern in Paoli, and Kings Tavern in Coatesville, announced Boondocks Bar and Grill for the former Hooters space at 1110 Baltimore Pike in Glen Mills back when a fall 2025 opening still seemed realistic. The plan calls for an 8,000 to 9,000-square-foot honky-tonk with line dancing, a large stage, and live music booked by local musician Brian McConnell, in a building owned by their partner Chet Patel, who also owns the connected Comfort Inn & Suites next door.
Fall 2025 came and went. The most recent reporting on it still described the opening as pending, with no confirmed date since. Builds this ambitious, with a stage, a dance floor, and a full entertainment booking operation layered on top of a kitchen, tend to slip. That's not a criticism of the Ferros, who have a track record of restaurants that stick around once they open. It's just a reminder that an announced opening date and an actual one are two different pieces of information, and this county has more than one example of the gap between them right now.
Reading a Neighborhood by What Actually Changes
Across Havertown, Wayne, and Glen Mills, the pattern is the same. A storefront gets announced, the announcement gets repeated across a few local outlets, and then the real timeline drifts, sometimes toward a bigger concept, sometimes toward a longer wait, sometimes toward a completely different tenant than the one everyone was told to expect. Knowing which of those three is happening at a given address tells you something true about the county that a single headline won't.
That kind of reading, paying attention to who actually signed the lease, what's under construction right now, and what's been sitting quiet for longer than it should, is the same instinct that matters when you're looking closely at any specific block or town in this county for reasons beyond dinner plans. If you're curious about what a particular Delaware County neighborhood is really like day to day, not just what a listing description says about it, that's a conversation worth having with someone who's paying attention to these details already.
Gavin LaRocca keeps a close eye on how Delaware County's towns are actually changing. Let's Connect.
