For twenty years, if you lived in Alabaster and wanted a Saturday brunch that wasn't a chain diner, you drove north. To Hoover. To 280. Maybe all the way to Homewood. That default is quietly ending this summer, and the reason isn't one restaurant. It's the way seven or eight of them are landing inside a ninety day window on the same side of Interstate 65.
The short version: the retail center of gravity in Alabaster is sliding from the south side of I-65 (the Promenade, JCPenney, the older Highway 31 strip) to the northwest quadrant of Exit 238, where a 75-acre "power-village" project spread across more than 600,000 square feet of new retail, restaurant, and hotel space is finally producing storefronts you can walk into. If you already live here, that shift will change which direction you turn out of your driveway on a weekend.
What you can actually visit right now
As of mid-June, exactly one tenant at The Shoppes at District 31 is open to customers: First Watch, which opened its doors on June 18, 2026, giving the community its first look at the new retail destination. It's the breakfast-and-brunch anchor Alumni Properties chose deliberately. The developer said the breakfast-brunch category was the most requested during pre-development feedback, which tells you something about what Alabaster residents have been driving out of town to find.
The First Watch space is a 4,400 square foot location at the front of the center facing U.S. 31. Everything else on the sign is still under buildout.
The next wave, in the order it's coming
The sign that went up in early June lists the first slate of tenants. Here's what's confirmed and what stage each one is at, based on developer and city statements through June 2026:
| Tenant | Category | Status as of mid-summer 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| First Watch | Breakfast / brunch | Open |
| Nothing Bundt Cakes | Bakery | Preparing to open |
| Chipotle Mexican Grill | Fast casual | Preparing to open |
| CAVA | Fast casual Mediterranean | Announced, buildout |
| Panera Bread | Bakery cafe | Announced, buildout |
| Tropical Smoothie Cafe | Fast casual | Announced, buildout |
| Hollywood Feed | Pet supply | Announced, buildout |
| Aspen Dental | Dental services | Announced, buildout |
| Five Guys | Burgers | Previously announced |
| Cedar Blue | Men's clothing | Previously announced |
Nothing Bundt Cakes and Chipotle are the next expected to open, with Hollywood Feed, CAVA, Panera, Tropical Smoothie and Aspen Dental following in the coming months. Previously announced tenants also include Five Guys and men's clothing store Cedar Blue, and Alumni Properties has said the development will feature a national Mexican grill, a deli/bakery, a regional sushi and hibachi restaurant and a regional sports and burger bar in addition to the current tenants.
Read the mix carefully. There is no full anchor supermarket in this first phase, no big-box discount store, no movie theater. The bet is on weekday lunch and light errand traffic. That matters if you're the resident trying to figure out whether District 31 replaces your existing routine or adds to it.
The bigger picture behind the storefronts
"District 31 is the largest retail-dominant commercial project in Alabama. It's a big win for Alabaster, as well as residents of Shelby, Chilton, and Bibb counties." — Keith Owens, CEO, Alumni Properties
The Shoppes at District 31 is only the front porch. The Shoppes at District 31 is the first phase in the District 31 commercial development, which has been in the planning process for years and is bringing approximately 600,000 square feet of new retail, restaurants and hotel space to the city in a $242 million investment. The broader plan calls for seven new-to-market national and regional anchor stores, national brand-name sit-down and fast-casual restaurants, smaller boutique-style retail, a national brand hotel, and 12,000 square feet of office space, with Alumni Properties relocating its own corporate office in as anchor tenant.
The location is chosen for interstate visibility, not just local traffic. Situated at Exit 238, The Shoppes at District 31 offers exceptional visibility along Interstate 65 and U.S. Highway 31 and is positioned to become a regional destination for shoppers, diners and visitors from across central Alabama. If you commute north on I-65 in the morning, that sign is now the first thing you see when you re-enter Alabaster on the way home.
Beyond District 31: the Medical Mile and the Highway 31 middle
The interesting activity isn't only at Exit 238. It's stretched across a two-mile stretch of Highway 31, and each cluster serves a different daily habit.
Near Shelby Baptist Hospital, on what the city is now calling the "Medical Mile." Crews are making progress on a new Dutch Bros Coffee in an area with limited retail development that the city administrator said they have been working to prioritize, because they want places where nurses, doctors and patients can go get lunch nearby. The coffee chain plans to open around early spring. A drive-thru coffee stand doesn't sound like news until you count how many hospital shift changes happen without a walk-in caffeine option within a mile.
Farther down Highway 31, an Aldi. Drivers can see a mountain of dirt from the Aldi parking lot, and city staff have noted that improvements at that intersection couldn't happen until crews brought the hill down. City officials expect many of these projects to open in the first part of the summer. Aldi's format is small and discount-heavy, which is a category Alabaster residents have historically driven to Pelham or Hoover to reach.
Hobby Lobby and Shoe Station are also headed to District 31. The city has confirmed a Hobby Lobby and a Shoe Station at District 31, and city leaders say there will be other big announcements soon.
Big Whiskey's is the sleeper. If you drove past the old O'Charley's off Highway 31 for years and wondered what would take it, a new Big Whiskey's opened in September 2025 in the South Promenade shopping center after extensive renovation work transformed the former O'Charley's building, and the city's Downtown Redevelopment Authority approved a facade grant earlier that year to assist with the project. That facade grant matters because it's the mechanism the city has been using to keep the older Promenade side of I-65 competitive with the shiny new one on the other side of the interstate.
The hotel wave nobody's talking about
Ask a resident what's changing in Alabaster and they'll mention restaurants. Ask them about hotels and they'll shrug. But the hotel buildout is running in parallel and it's larger than most people realize.
Multiple new hotels are coming off Balmoral Drive near the Promenade shopping center. A new Fairfield Inn/TownePlace Suites is under construction and will join the existing Holiday Inn Express, Candlewood Suites and the soon-to-be-constructed Hampton Inn and Suites/Home2 Suites. That's four flags clustered in a single node.
You can already see the ripple effect on events. Neighboring businesses and Alabaster's growing hotel industry near I-65 stand to benefit from CityFest crowds; a city council member noted that with current hotel capacity they "almost fill it up" with people coming in for the show, and that new hotels are breaking ground. If you host out-of-town family for graduation weekend at Thompson High or for a Buck Creek trip through neighboring Helena, you now have more options within five minutes of your street.
What this changes about a Saturday in Alabaster
Here's the thesis, stated plainly. Before this summer, an Alabaster resident's default weekend map had two centers of gravity: the Promenade side of I-65 (JCPenney, older Highway 31 retail) for errands, and points north (Hoover, Riverchase, 280) for anything you couldn't get locally. District 31 puts a third anchor on the north side of Exit 238, and the pull is strong enough to change the pattern.
Weekday brunch stops being a Hoover trip. Fast-casual lunch pulls off I-65 instead of driving another ten minutes. Pet supply runs to Hollywood Feed, dental appointments at Aspen, a Panera coffee before Saturday sports at Warrior Park, Nothing Bundt Cakes for a birthday you forgot until the last minute. None of these are individually dramatic. Collectively they subtract car trips out of town and add foot traffic to a single node on U.S. 31.
The city is not shy about why it did this. Alabaster's public relations manager said residents have been telling the city "we want to do more in Alabaster," that they want to stay here and support local rather than drive to other cities, and that this development is a first step in making that a reality.
There is a real estate consequence to that, even if you're not thinking about moving. When retail gravity shifts, the streets and subdivisions that sit inside a comfortable drive of the new node tend to get more attention from buyers who used to overlook them. Neighborhoods on the north side of Alabaster, along Warrior Parkway and toward the Helena line, are now the ones with a five-minute drive to a First Watch, a CAVA, and eventually a Hobby Lobby. Whether that shows up in list prices this year or next is a question for a different post. It's already showing up in traffic counts.
The short answer to "what should I actually try first?"
If you have one Saturday this month and you're deciding where to go, First Watch is the only District 31 tenant that will actually seat you. Watch for Nothing Bundt Cakes and Chipotle next, then CAVA and Panera. The Dutch Bros on the Medical Mile is worth a coffee run if you work near Shelby Baptist. Big Whiskey's has been open since last fall and remains the easiest reservation-free dinner if you're on the Promenade side of I-65.
Circle back in October. By then the sign at Exit 238 will match the storefronts, and the map of a Saturday in Alabaster will look different than it did in May.
If you're an Alabaster resident wondering how the District 31 buildout is starting to move buyer interest in specific streets and subdivisions, or a homeowner curious what these openings mean for your equity picture, the team at Jordan Hosey tracks this market street by street. Schedule Your Home Strategy with us and we'll walk you through what's actually changing near your address, not just the version you read on the sign.
