Drive past RiverTown Crossings this spring and the story looked familiar. Another blocked-off entrance where Macy's used to be. Another empty anchor box next to the one Sears left behind years ago. If you've lived in Grandville long enough to remember when this mall had five working anchors instead of two and a half, the math looked like decline.
The math is wrong. Macy's closing didn't leave a hole. It left an opening, and something specific has been moving into it all year: not more retail, but restaurants.
The Anchor Stores Left. The Restaurants Moved In.
Macy's closed its RiverTown Crossings store at the end of March 2026, part of a national round of 14 closures the company announced that January. That space sits empty for now, and so does the old Sears building next door, which has been dark for years. On paper, that's two big vacant boxes in the same shopping center within the same twelve months.
What's filled in around them tells a different story. Celebration Cinema spent $5.8 million on a two-phase renovation of its RiverTown location, the last Celebration Cinema in the Grand Rapids area to get the upgrade. Phase one, finished in July 2025, brought 4K laser projectors, Dolby Atmos sound, and heated recliners to the auditoriums. Phase two redid the entire lobby and added something the theater never had before: a full restaurant. Oscar's Restaurant & Bar opened this spring with a menu that runs from pizza and burgers to quesadillas, plus beer, wine, and cocktails, open until 11 p.m. on weekends. Theatre manager Austin Mueller put it simply when the restaurant launched: "Our team is thrilled to complete the renovation of the theatre lobby and launch this new restaurant."
Two doors down in the mall's upper food court, Pho Luu opened in December 2025 in the space that used to be Panera and, before that, Matt's Gyros. Across the mall's main level, Inspire Marketplace opened in November 2025 in the old Harrison's West furniture showroom, after the swap was announced that October.
None of that is retail replacing retail. It's food and experience replacing furniture and department stores, and it happened inside of about a year.
Six More Are Already Signed
The mall isn't done. RiverTown Crossings has six additional businesses confirmed to open soon, and the mix leans hard into the same direction. SNACK'D will stock snacks from more than 40 countries alongside its own homemade treats. Summit Comics and Games is bringing comic books, board games, tabletop RPGs, trading cards, and Funko Pops to a space built for people who want a reason to linger, not just shop. The announcement also named a claw machine spot and a dirty soda bar among the incoming six, though those two haven't been identified by name yet.
Outside the mall's walls but inside its orbit, the food additions keep stacking up. Mr. and Mrs. Crab, known for seafood boils with Szechuan flavors, opened a second West Michigan location at 4505 Canal Ave SW this year, in the former Hong BBQ & Hot Pot space. Inside the food court, Only Pans Cafe, run by chef Alecia Winters after several years as a specialty cake and pastry business, aimed to open its comfort food concept by the end of this past July or early August.
Then there's the project everyone's been watching from the road. The old Sears Auto Center, empty for years, is being demolished to make way for a Raising Cane's, approved by the Grandville Planning Commission in late 2025. Construction was expected to start that February, and the company has targeted a fall 2026 opening.
Put those pieces on a timeline and the pattern is unmistakable: in the same window that RiverTown Crossings lost its two biggest department store anchors, it picked up a renovated cinema restaurant, a new food court tenant, a furniture-to-lifestyle swap, a seafood spot down the road, a bakery-turned-cafe, a comic and game shop, a global snack concept, and a fast food chain under construction. The mall didn't shrink. It changed what it's for.
Downtown Isn't Watching From the Sidelines
Two miles east, downtown Grandville has been building its own version of the same thing, on its own schedule, without any help from the mall.
The Social District along Chicago Drive lets you carry a drink between businesses within the designated Commons Area, and right now that means Michigan Moonshine Distillery and Oakestown Brewery, the two current license holders. Trivia night at Michigan Moonshine has become a fixture on the downtown events calendar. Storefronts like Gracie Jane's Boutique keep the daytime foot traffic moving between events.
The Grandville Farmers Market runs every Tuesday from June through September, which means the 2026 season has only a handful of weeks left before it wraps for the year. If you've been meaning to make it down there for produce and local vendors, this is closer to the end of that window than the beginning.
Fall Fest is the bigger one. Downtown Grandville's signature fall event has landed in early October for years running, and it always includes the Lit Pumpkin Trail around the library, live bands, food vendors, and enough kid-focused activity to fill an entire Saturday. It's presented by the DDA in partnership with the Grandville Jenison Chamber, and it's the kind of event where you run into people you haven't seen since last year's Fall Fest.
Why This Timing Actually Matters
Here's the part that turns two separate updates into one story worth knowing. Raising Cane's is targeting a fall 2026 opening at RiverTown Crossings. Fall Fest lands downtown in early October, as it has for years. If both timelines hold, the mall's newest anchor and downtown's biggest annual event arrive in the same few weeks, on opposite ends of a town that residents have long treated as two separate destinations with two separate reasons to visit.
That's not a coincidence anyone planned. It's just what happens when a mall stops trying to be a department store complex and a downtown business district keeps doing what it's always done well, at the same time, in the same year. For someone who's lived in Grandville for a while, it means the fall calendar has more reasons to cross town than it used to. Dinner at Oscar's before a movie, then a Saturday afternoon walking the Lit Pumpkin Trail. A Tuesday farmers market run before the season ends, then a Friday trivia night at Michigan Moonshine. None of it required Grandville to become a different town. It just quietly became a town with more going on in both directions.
If you're the kind of person who keeps half an eye on what's happening in this neighborhood, whether that's a new restaurant, a construction sign, or just curiosity about where the town is headed next, that's exactly the kind of local read Jake Peterson Homes keeps close tabs on. Reach out anytime you want the local perspective on Grandville, whether you're asking about a listing or just wondering what's opening next.
