Drive down Kendall Drive on a Wednesday evening this summer and something feels different, even if you can't quite name it. A new burger sign where Fujiya used to be. Scaffolding where the old Publix stood for forty years. A ribbon of shaded pathway inching south under the Metrorail tracks toward Dadeland.
None of these are headline events on their own. Together they are. For the first time in years, the geography of daily life in Kendall is being redrawn around a single spine, the Metrorail corridor, and the changes are close enough to your front door that they will show up in your calendar before they show up on a map.
The SW 88th Street stretch is quietly becoming its own scene
The clearest signal is what has opened, and what is about to, along a mile of SW 88th Street. In December, Lala's Burgers opened its first standalone restaurant in Kendall, after starting as a Tuesday-only pop-up at Apocalypse BBQ. The address is 13750 SW 88th St., the former Fujiya Japanese Restaurant space, and the room seats about seventy.
It is not a chain arrival. Owners Jeff and Laura "Lala" Budnechky launched Apocalypse BBQ from their backyard in 2020, and expanded to a 190-seat space at the Kendall Village Shopping Center in March 2025. The burger shop is their second Kendall room in fifteen months. The beer list leans local on purpose, with Everhaze IPA from Tripping Animals, La Playita from The Tank Brewing Co., and La Rubia from Wynwood Brewing Company pouring alongside harder-to-find labels.
A few blocks west, another operator is moving in. Kung Fu Chicken, founded by Chef Yu Bi and her husband and business partner, Dr. Tingjun Lei, is scheduled to open this fall at 12536 SW 88th Street. It will be the fast-casual brand's fourth South Florida location, joining restaurants at Florida International University, Little Havana and Miami Beach. The through-line is worth noticing. Two of the three most talked-about new food openings in Kendall this year are being run by operators with existing Miami roots, not by out-of-market franchises rolling south down US-1.
The Palms is rebuilding itself in public
If SW 88th is filling in at street level, the Palms at Town & Country is doing something bigger and messier: tearing down its own anchors and starting over. In January, Publix closed its 40-year-old Palms store, and by mid-April it was demolished to make way for a bigger, contemporary supermarket, with construction on the foundation now underway. If you have been wondering why your usual grocery run has gotten strange this year, that is why.
The rest of the tenant mix is turning over in parallel. Here is what has landed or is landing at 11800 Mills Drive this year:
- Cava opened a 2,720-square-foot location inside the vacated Bolay space near the new Starbucks on April 17, with a Mediterranean-inspired menu of bowls, pitas and salads
- Pura Vida Miami, a 3,425-square-foot cafe with bowls, smoothies, salads, coffee and matcha, opens this summer
- Yoga Joint, a Sunrise-based fitness concept, introduces a 5,360-square-foot studio next to J.Crew Factory this summer, with infrared-heated FIIT and FLOW classes
- JETSET Pilates, the Wynwood-based music-driven Pilates studio, is scheduled to open a 2,007-square-foot studio near Pisco y Nazca this winter
- A Tesla showroom and service center is coming to the site of a long-gone Toys R Us across the street on Southwest 117th Avenue later this year
- A new Barnes & Noble opened inside the mall last October, replacing a larger, older store that had closed a mile away at Kendall Village, and Miniso opened a 7,000-square-foot store next to Ann Taylor Factory
Read the list together and a pattern appears. The Palms is no longer trying to be a place you drive to for one errand. Grocery, coffee, workout, bookstore, EV service, dinner — the tenant mix is being assembled so that a resident within a two-mile radius can string an entire evening together without leaving the property. That is a different real estate product than the strip mall Kendall grew up with.
Dadeland is doing the luxury version of the same move
Two miles east, Dadeland Mall is running the higher-price-point edition of that playbook. The property spans more than 1.4 million square feet with more than 185 stores, and the Terrace Dining development features Aoki Teppanyaki, Earls Kitchen + Bar, Texas de Brazil and Cantina Catrina. The Kendall Wing additions announced for the near term include Gucci, Dick's House of Sports, Warby Parker, Maceeo, Tutto Piccolo, Tommy Bahama, Kendra Scott, and Ben's Pizza, alongside the recent arrivals of an Apple flagship, CVI.CHE 105 and North Italia at the main entrance.
The station next door is being remade at the same time. The Dadeland South Metrorail Station is getting a $66 million renovation, the Dadeland South Intermodal Station project, launched under Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and the Department of Transportation and Public Works, to improve connectivity, reliability, safety, and parking. When finished, the station will offer new weather canopies, a seamless connection to the county's Bus Rapid Transit system, and a dedicated bike path connecting to The Underline and the South Dade Trail.
That last detail is the one worth circling.
The Underline is finally coming to us
For the past five years, The Underline has been a Brickell story. This year that changes. In May, Friends of The Underline officially opened Segment 4 from SW 27th Avenue to SW 37th Avenue, marking the completion of five continuous miles of trail. The "Five Years, Five Miles" ribbon cutting was led by Mayor Daniella Levine Cava with District 7 County Commissioner Raquel Regalado, Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago, and Commissioner Rhonda Anderson in attendance.
The relevant question for anyone living in Kendall is when the trail actually reaches Dadeland. Here the sources converge. Phase 3, the 7.36-mile segment from SW 19th Avenue to Dadeland South station, is scheduled for completion in 2026, and the segment is under construction and expected to open in stages between 2025 and 2026, passing through the City of Miami, Coral Gables, South Miami and unincorporated Miami-Dade County. When phase 3 is complete, the 10-mile Underline will stretch from Downtown Miami to the Dadeland South Metrorail Station near Dadeland Mall, creating a total of 120 acres of tropical gardens and outdoor recreation space.
There is a further conversation already underway. Miami-Dade County Commissioner Raquel Regalado has announced plans to propose extending The Underline toward Ludlam Trail and Snapper Creek in Kendall. If that happens, the linear park stops ending at Dadeland and starts threading west into Kendall proper.
What this actually changes about a week in Kendall
Any one of these updates is a shrug. Assembled, they change the answer to a small but real question: how much of an ordinary week can you spend inside Kendall without pointing your car north on the Palmetto?
Consider a Saturday. Morning class at Yoga Joint, coffee and a bowl at Pura Vida on the way out, groceries at the new Publix once it opens, an early dinner at Lala's Burgers with the vinyl section the owners have been building out, a walk south along the Underline segment as it opens toward Dadeland South, a browse at the new Barnes & Noble on the way home. Two years ago half those stops did not exist. A year from now, if the timelines hold, all of them will be within a few miles of each other along a corridor you can walk, bike, or ride the train through.
The wider Kendall backdrop matters for how quickly this reshapes the residential market. Alexan Kendall is planned inside the 20-acre mixed-use Kendall Town Center on SW 88th Street, with 576 apartment homes and amenity spaces alongside West Kendall Baptist Hospital and other retail destinations. At The Palms, Kimco Realty proposed a pair of 12-story apartment buildings on the site of a Kohl's-leased building, offering 630 rental units and roughly 35,000 square feet of retail across the two towers. These are big numbers for a market that has historically been low-rise and single-family. They also explain why the tenant mix at the shopping centers is shifting toward daily-use amenities, not just discretionary retail. The rooftops are being planned before the coffee shops.
For a household that already owns here, that is worth knowing before the neighbors start talking about it. The corner of Kendall that used to be defined by which mall you drove to is quietly being redefined by which segment of an eight-block walk you live closest to.
If you would like a thoughtful read on how these shifts are showing up in specific pockets of Kendall, or how a particular street or building is likely to feel a year from now, Laura Montes is happy to talk through it in detail. Let's Connect.
