Walk into The Streets at SouthGlenn on the morning of September 12 and you'll find nearly a hundred artists on their knees with chalk pastels, working sidewalk squares into portraits and cartoon characters and abstract color fields before a Saturday crowd that, based on past years, will likely top 5,000 people by afternoon. A DJ spins vinyl-only sets near the promenade starting at 10 a.m. Forty-some kids run booths selling their own crafts. Judges announce category winners at 3:30 at the Commons Park stage.
Fifty yards away, behind glass that used to say Macy's, there's nothing. No signage, no lights, no register. The store that anchored this property for nearly two decades closed in January 2022, the last holdover from the original Southglenn Mall that opened here in 1974. It joined Macy's Home Store, Staples, Dick's Sporting Goods, and Best Buy, all of which have shuttered their spaces at this 950,000-square-foot center over the past several years. Sears left even earlier, closing in 2018 as part of a nationwide wind-down.
If you've lived in Centennial for a while, you already know the property looks different than it did a decade ago. What's less obvious, unless you've been here on a festival Saturday, is that the crowd hasn't thinned along with the anchor list. It's arguably gotten bigger. The property that used to sell you a couch or a printer now sells you an afternoon, and the afternoon is working.
The Anchors That Left
The current tenant roster at SouthGlenn tells its own story. Sephora, LOFT, Old Navy, and Marshalls cover apparel and beauty. T-Mobile and Verizon handle wireless. BMO provides banking. Andrews Jewelers and a shop called Artworks add the kind of specialty retail that doesn't need 100,000 square feet to make its case. What's missing from that list is any single store built to be the reason you drove here. There's no department store anchor left at all, a structural gap that's been building for years:
- 2018 — Sears closes as part of a 142-store national closure plan.
- 2022 — Macy's closes, the last remaining tenant from the original 1974 mall.
- Ongoing — Macy's Home Store, Staples, Dick's Sporting Goods, and Best Buy have all vacated their spaces at the property.
That list matters less for what it says about any single retailer's fortunes and more for what it means about how the property has had to reposition itself. A shopping center built around anchor tenants that no longer exist doesn't just lose square footage. It loses its reason for a first-time visit. What's replaced that reason at SouthGlenn isn't another anchor. It's the calendar.
The Restaurants Filling in Around It
Some of that filling-in is happening inside the property itself. Home Team Deli, a sandwich shop built around a baseball theme with Chicago-style Italian beef and hot dogs, opened its Centennial location at 6955 S. York Street, right inside SouthGlenn, joining locations in Broomfield and on South Colorado Boulevard in Denver. It's a small tenant compared to what used to occupy the property's big boxes, but it's the kind of shop that draws a lunch crowd on a Tuesday, not just a festival crowd twice a year.
The bigger food-scene shifts in Centennial this year have happened outside SouthGlenn's fence line, which is its own useful data point. Kinoya Sushi & Izakaya is taking over the former Bono's Pit Bar-B-Q space at 9393 East Dry Creek Road. The project comes from Skye Ni, a local restaurateur who also owns Shoyu Sushi & Japanese Cuisine in Parker, and it's positioned as an upscale, two-tier all-you-can-eat concept, with a classic menu of familiar rolls and hot dishes alongside a premium tier. It's not affiliated with the Michelin-recommended restaurant of the same name in Dubai, a detail worth knowing if you're searching for it online.
Not every story this year has been an opening. Chicago Mike's Beef & Dogs, a fixture on the Briarwood corridor at 11405 East Briarwood Avenue since 1998, closed for good in late August after the passing of longtime owner Giles Everist. Nearly three decades of Italian hot beef sandwiches and Vienna Beef hot dogs ended with a note taped to the door thanking the neighborhood. Rock Bottom Brewery's location on County Line Road closed the same month, part of a broader retreat by the chain's new ownership that also shuttered the Highlands Ranch location and leaves Loveland as the only Rock Bottom left in Colorado.
Taken together, the pattern in Centennial's food scene right now isn't decline. It's turnover, and turnover concentrated around independent operators rather than national chains. Kinoya is a local owner's second location. Home Team Deli started here and at a Broomfield location before expanding to a third spot on South Colorado Boulevard in Denver, with a fourth reportedly planned for Boulder. What's leaving is largely legacy chain real estate. What's arriving is smaller, more specific, and more likely to be run by someone who lives in the area.
The Chalk Festival Is the Tell
Back to September 12. The Chalk Art Festival isn't new to SouthGlenn, but it's a useful measuring stick precisely because it predates most of the recent anchor closures. It's been drawing crowds here for years, and last year's event drew more than 5,000 attendees judging close to 100 chalk pieces, according to coverage from FOX31 Denver. This year's edition runs 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a DJ set from 10 to 11:30, a Kids Market featuring more than 40 booths from young vendors ages 5 to 17, and winners announced at the Commons Park stage at 3:30.
What's changed isn't the festival's draw. It's what surrounds it. A decade ago, a chalk festival at a mall anchored by Macy's and Best Buy was a nice bonus on top of a retail trip. Today, with those anchors gone, the festival and events like it have become a bigger share of the reason to show up at all. The property isn't hiding this shift. Its own event calendar has grown alongside the vacancies, not despite them, with a Fine Art Festival debuting in May 2026 and running through the same promenade space the Chalk Art Festival uses each September.
What's Next If You're Already Marking a Calendar
If Chalk Art Festival weekend becomes a habit, the next big date on the Centennial calendar sits a little further out and a little further south. Tagawa Gardens, the family-owned garden center on South Parker Road, hosts its Arts & Crafts Festival November 6 through 8, with vendor booths, handmade goods, and holiday shopping timed for exactly when Denver's weather turns. Entry runs $6 for the weekend, with kids 12 and under and veterans admitted free.
Further out on the calendar, and further from the shopping center conversation, Launch Family Entertainment has signed a lease at Yosemite Park Shopping Center for its first Colorado location: a 35,350-square-foot venue with bowling, mini golf, arcade games, and a KRAVE restaurant and bar. Construction was expected to begin in August 2026, with an opening targeted for early 2027. It's a reminder that Centennial's retail geography is still being written, even as SouthGlenn's own anchor chapter closes.
The Trail Between It All
None of this requires a car if you live close enough. The Big Dry Creek Trail runs 5.4 paved miles between Littleton and a terminus at South Colorado Boulevard and East Links Parkway in Centennial, cutting through Cherry Knolls Park, where the creek widens into a pond where fishing is allowed, and continuing under Dry Creek Road, Arapahoe Road, and University Boulevard through a series of underpasses that keep foot traffic off the main roads. It's a leashed-dog trail with a shallow, continuous grade, the kind of route people use on a Tuesday evening rather than saving for a special trip, and it connects at its eastern end to the High Line Canal Trail near deKoevend Park, which is its own long-distance option if you want to keep going.
The trail isn't a festival or a restaurant opening, but it's the connective tissue for a neighborhood where the built environment is quietly changing shape. Big-box retail is contracting. Independent food and beverage is filling in around the edges. Event programming is doing more of the work that anchor stores used to do. None of it requires you to drive across town, which might be the most Centennial thing about it.
If you're weighing what a property like this means for values nearby, or you're simply curious what a shift like this looks like on paper for a specific address, Stuart Crowell can walk you through it. Reach out for a private market conversation or to ask about what's moving in Centennial before it shows up in the next headline.
