Oldham Village Is Two Projects Wearing One Name, and Only Half of It Is Open

Drive east on Oldham Parkway from the US 50 and Missouri 291 interchange this week and you will pass a barbecue joint with cars stacked in its lot, a Chick-fil-A with a line still wrapping the building at lunch, and then, within a quarter mile, a stretch of chain-link fence and dirt where a Costco is supposed to open in less than three weeks. Ask three different neighbors what "Oldham Village" means and you will get three different answers, because right now it means two different things.

That mix-up is not a small detail. It is the reason half the people near this interchange think Costco already opened and the other half think the whole area is still a construction site. Neither is right, and the gap between the two matters if you are the one trying to plan a Saturday, a commute, or a grocery run around it.

Same Interchange, Two Separate Clocks

The original Oldham Village sits on the southeast quadrant of the 291/50 interchange. It is the smaller of the two projects, and it is largely open for business. Chick-fil-A Oldham Village started serving at 1001 SW Jefferson Crossing on February 26, 2026, with local owner-operator Lance Spencer running it as his second Lee's Summit restaurant. Q39 followed on August 3, opening its fourth and largest location yet at 240 SW Oldham Parkway, a 10,000-square-foot building with room for more than 200 diners and a private dining space named the Rob Magee Room. A Starbucks has been leased into a multi-tenant building on the same pad.

Oldham Village East is a different animal entirely, and it sits on the northeast corner of the same interchange. This is the project anchored by Costco, and it is still under construction. Reporting on the project's cost has ranged from $416 million to $481 million depending on the source, but every account agrees it covers roughly 130 acres and is being built where an industrial corridor, including the former Pfizer manufacturing plant, used to stand. Costco has now set a firm opening date of October 2, 2026, for its warehouse at 10 SE Oldham Parkway.

If you have been confused about whether "Oldham Village" is open or still a construction zone, this is why. You were asking about both projects at once.

What You Can Actually Drive to This Week

Here is the part that matters if you live nearby and want dinner tonight rather than a development timeline. Q39's Lee's Summit kitchen runs four Southern Pride smokers and serves Certified Angus Beef, and the restaurant says its most popular order is the brisket plate. This is the chain's fourth location, joining the original in Midtown Kansas City, a second in Overland Park, and a third that opened in Lawrence this past March inside the former Lawrence Journal-World printing plant on New Hampshire Street. Q39 does not franchise into secondary markets, so choosing this corner of Lee's Summit for its biggest build yet is the company betting on this specific interchange rather than just filling a lease.

Chick-fil-A Oldham Village has been running long enough now, since late February, that the operational kinks are worked out. Spencer's team also runs Chick-fil-A Summit Fair, which he has operated since 2014, and that experience shows in a drive-thru that moves fast even at peak lunch.

Neither of those facts requires you to wait for anything. They are already true.

What's Still Just a Sign on a Fence

The Costco side of the interchange is a different story, and the timeline is worth knowing precisely because it is easy to assume "opening this fall" means "open now." It does not, at least not yet.

Costco's building will be a 166,000-square-foot version of its newest prototype, with a free-standing fuel facility built around 12 pump positions offering 24 fueling stations and an initial parking layout of 888 stalls, according to plans presented to the Lee's Summit City Council this spring. Beyond the warehouse itself, the broader East Village plan includes two apartment buildings, one with 320 units and one with 250, plus additional retail and dining pads still working through the leasing process. None of that is open, and most of it does not have a public date yet.

The original Oldham Village project carries its own second wave still to come, too. Drake Development's plans for that 50-acre site include 307 Class A apartment units, a sports and fitness complex, an eatertainment concept, and a grocery store, alongside the restaurants already serving customers. Those pieces have been announced but not dated.

What the Land Used to Be

Both halves of this corridor were built on top of something else, which is part of why the change has felt sudden if you have lived nearby for a while. The original Oldham Village site was a former auto auction lot, cleared and regraded as part of the redevelopment, according to the infrastructure contractor that handled the site work. Oldham Village East is being built on a former industrial corridor, and the project's second construction phase includes demolition of the old Pfizer manufacturing plant that used to anchor the space between the two highways.

Lee's Summit Mayor Bill Baird has framed the Costco arrival as a turning point for that stretch of the city, saying "where Costco goes, really good businesses, retail usually follows." A longtime area resident, Bob Strawn, who remembers when Highway 291 had only a single blinking traffic light, welcomed the change more simply: "It will be convenient."

Drake Development also requested $111 million in tax incentives to complete the East Village project as of its December 2025 presentation to the city, a figure that was still being finalized at that point and is worth knowing if you follow how the corridor's public cost compares to its private investment.

What This Means for Your Next Few Weekends

If you have been putting off a trip to the new barbecue place because you assumed the whole interchange was still torn up, it is not. Q39 and Chick-fil-A are both open and running at full service today. If you have been checking every week for a Costco opening date, mark October 2 and expect the store, not the surrounding retail pads or apartments, to be the only piece of Oldham Village East that is actually ready that day.

The rest of the corridor, on both sides of the interchange, is still a work in progress. That is not a criticism of the pace. A 130-acre project on a former industrial site takes longer than a single restaurant build, and the fact that Costco has a firm date at all this far in advance says the project is tracking closer to plan than a lot of large developments manage.

What is worth remembering is simpler than any of the construction timeline: this corner of Lee's Summit is being rebuilt in two distinct phases with two distinct clocks, and conflating them is the easiest way to be wrong about what you can actually do this weekend.

Paulson-Dow keeps a close eye on how corridors like this change the daily rhythm of the neighborhoods we work in, not because every shift is a real estate story, but because knowing what just opened, what's still fenced off, and what used to be there is part of actually living somewhere. If you are curious about how a change like this might touch your own street down the road, Paulson / Dow is always glad to talk it through.