What's Actually Opening in Leland This Year (and What Got Pushed to 2027)

Drive US 17 through Leland on any given afternoon and you will pass two development projects promising the same thing: more places to eat, shop, and get your dog groomed without crossing the Cape Fear River. One sits inside the already-familiar Leland Town Center, where a roundabout at Gateway Boulevard and Tradeway Drive has been waiting more than a year for a steakhouse. The other is a full-scale new development at US 17 and Kingsbridge Road, a Publix-anchored project that just added eleven tenants in a single announcement.

Both projects have been "coming soon" for a while now. The useful thing to know, if you live here, is that the timelines you may have heard last year are not the timelines that hold today. One popular estimate slipped by several months. A restaurant that was supposed to arrive without much fuss instead needed four rounds of town revisions to get built. If you have been half-tracking these projects from a neighbor's Facebook post or a sign at the site, here is what has actually changed.

The Corridor That's Been Waiting

Leland Town Center already has the tenants that made it a daily errand stop: Lowe's Home Improvement, Chick-fil-A, Starbucks, Firehouse Subs, Eggs Up Grill, Al's Burger Shack, HotWorx, Mavis Tires & Brakes, Lavish Nails, and Alliance Animal Health. What it has not had, despite years of anticipation, is a large sit-down restaurant or a full-service gym.

Texas Roadhouse is finally coming, but the path there says something about how development actually works in a fast-growing town. C&S Commercial Properties announced the steakhouse back in January 2025. Plans were not submitted until around September of that year, and town engineers sent them back four separate times, citing crosswalk alignment that did not match the site plan, landscaping that needed to line up with what was actually proposed, and a parking study for some of the spaces. Town staff finally approved the site plan on April 9, 2026, for a 7,926-square-foot restaurant with 152 parking spaces near the Gateway Boulevard roundabout. It will be the chain's first Brunswick County location and its second in the Wilmington area, joining the existing restaurant on Eastwood Road. As of that April approval, Texas Roadhouse itself said it had no firm opening date to share.

O2 Fitness tells a similar story. Back in January 2025, it was listed as a tenant "expected to open this year." Its own website still describes the Leland location as coming soon, with no date attached. If you have been waiting for a full-service gym closer than Brunswick Forest, the honest update is that the wait continues, without a public timeline to point to.

The Corridor That Just Got Real

A few miles away, Leland Village has moved faster in the sense that matters most to a shopping center: signed leases. This is the 131,795-square-foot, Publix-anchored project on 25 acres at US 17 and Kingsbridge Road, developed by the Atlanta-based Branch Properties in partnership with Columbia Properties. The center will include a 50,325-square-foot Publix, junior anchors Marshalls and Ulta Beauty, and 46,970 square feet of smaller inline shops.

On August 19, 2026, Branch Properties announced eleven new tenants had signed leases, pushing the project to 93 percent leased. The new additions are worth naming individually, because they change what a Leland resident can expect within walking distance of a shared parking lot:

• Handel's Ice Cream, which will be the first location for the chain anywhere in the Wilmington area
• First Watch, the breakfast and brunch chain
• Domino's Pizza and Wingstop for quick delivery and takeout
• Qdoba, a fast-casual Mexican option
• Chase Bank
• Hollywood Feed, a pet specialty retailer
• FS8 Pilates and Glo MedSpa, both boutique fitness and wellness concepts
• Mattress Firm and Sport Clips

These join tenants announced earlier: Heartland Dental, EmergeOrtho, and a nail salon, alongside the Marshalls and Ulta anchors. The new additions broaden the center's mix with dining, personal care, and healthcare services.

Branch Properties has also published numbers for the surrounding trade area. In a May 2025 release, the company described a three-mile trade area around the site with about 21,373 residents and an average household income just over $106,400. By the August 2026 release, that same three-mile radius had grown to more than 23,000 residents with average household income near $107,000. A jump of roughly 1,600 residents in the immediate trade area in about fifteen months is a fast clip for a ring that small.

Why the Timeline Moved

Here is the part worth knowing if you had circled a date on your calendar. When Branch Properties first announced Leland Village in May 2025, the target was for Publix, Marshalls, and Ulta Beauty to open by October 2026, about fourteen months after an expected groundbreaking. The most recent coverage, from both WECT and Fox Wilmington in the past two weeks, now places the opening in early 2027. That is not a collapse of the project. The center is 93 percent leased, which is a strong number for a shopping center still under construction. It is a reminder that retail construction timelines announced at groundbreaking are best-case estimates, and permitting, weather, and construction sequencing routinely add a season or two before the doors actually open.

The Texas Roadhouse story shows the same pattern from a different angle. A restaurant chain with a straightforward building plan still needed more than a year and four rounds of town review before getting a shovel in the ground. If you are budgeting your own expectations around either project, plan for late winter or spring 2027 rather than the end of this year.

What This Adds Up To

Leland already has an established shopping identity built around Waterford Village, where Harris Teeter anchors a lineup that includes Panera Bread, Smithfield's Chicken and BBQ, Five Guys, Jersey Mike's, and Milly's Ice Cream, plus Sandalwood Shoppes, a co-op marketplace with more than 40 individual small business vendors under one roof. That corridor proved out the model years ago. What is happening now at Town Center and Leland Village adds another layer, with sit-down restaurants, medical offices, and boutique fitness studios joining the existing mix.

If you have lived in Leland for a while, you already know the traffic patterns are shifting around both corridors, and you have probably wondered when the construction fencing will finally come down. The honest answer is likely sometime in 2027 for the bigger pieces, with a few Town Center tenants like Texas Roadhouse arriving sooner once the current approval clears the way for construction. Handel's Ice Cream, at least, gives you something concrete to look forward to. It will be the first one in the Wilmington area, and Leland gets it first.

For more on how Leland fits into the broader picture of southeastern North Carolina, browse our other neighborhood guides or reach out directly. If you are watching this corridor for reasons that go beyond ice cream flavors, whether you are weighing a move within Leland or curious what a home near either development might be worth, Cristina Sullivan is happy to talk through what you are seeing on the ground. Let's Connect.