Legacy at Covell Edmond Update: What's Next for Retail and Homes

If you drive Covell Road on the east side of town, you've watched that corner at I-35 sit behind a chain-link fence for the better part of a decade. A Hilton Garden Inn and conference center went up in 2016. ShowBiz Cinemas followed in 2018. Then nothing, for years, while the rest of the 110 acres stayed dirt.

That changed fast this year. The city put $17 million behind it in March. A tenant list leaked out over the summer. By now, if you follow Edmond news at all, you've probably already read that Whole Foods is coming, that Cooper's Hawk Winery is a first for the state, and that Dick's Sporting Goods will anchor the other end of the lot. That part of the story is settled and it's not new information if you've been paying attention.

What hasn't made it into most of that coverage is what happened in the six days between August 4 and August 10. Two separate city votes landed almost back to back, and neither one was about the restaurants everyone's been talking about. One approved a second retail building before the first anchor has even opened its doors. The other quietly turned a shopping center into a neighborhood. Read together, they change what this corner is actually going to do to the streets around it.

The Retail List, For Anyone Catching Up

Here's the short version, since you've likely seen pieces of it already. Whole Foods will be the primary anchor, only the second location in the OKC metro, alongside Dick's Sporting Goods as the second. The agreement the city signed lists nine targeted retailers total, and leases have already been executed for Whole Foods, Dick's, PetSmart, Hobby Lobby, La La Land Coffee, Chipotle, Shake Shack, Texas Roadhouse, Pei Wei, Chase Bank, AT&T and Mauve Nail Salon. Cooper's Hawk is written into the deal too, though the agreement treats Cooper's Hawk and Ruth's Chris as interchangeable, meaning only one of the two is guaranteed. The $17 million funding the incentive money comes out of the Edmond Electric Reserve Fund, which the city expects to recoup through sales tax within four to five years. Whole Foods itself is projected to open on a 12 to 14 month timeline from the March vote, which points to spring or summer 2027.

That's the version everyone already has. It's accurate. It's also not the whole picture anymore.

Two Votes That Didn't Get Read Together

On August 4, the Edmond Planning Commission approved the site plan for what's being called Legacy at Covell Anchors Phase 2, a roughly 140,000-square-foot retail building on 15.2 acres with four anchor spaces. That's a second major retail structure, separate from the Whole Foods and Dick's buildings, going up while the first phase is still mid-construction. A resident raised concerns at that meeting about stormwater, saying much of the project would drain a large amount of new asphalt and that detention plans weren't visible on the public site documents. The developer's team said a detention pond and storm sewer network were included in the plan, and the commission approved it 5-0 after that exchange.

Six days later, on August 10, the City Council approved a second amendment to the project's Planned Unit Development that raises the maximum residential units allowed on the property to 850. The developer had originally asked for 950 before scaling back to 850 during negotiations. The amendment also combines two development areas on the northern part of the property, giving the developer more flexibility to mix residential and commercial uses there, and it keeps open the possibility of a future road connection north toward Coffee Creek.

Neither vote made the tenant-list version of this story that's been circulating since spring. But put them side by side and the picture is different from the one most people have in their heads. This isn't just a grocery store and a handful of restaurants landing on a corner that's been empty for years. It's that same corner adding a second full retail building and up to 850 new households, and both of those approvals happened before the first anchor tenant has opened a single door.

Why the Order Matters More Than the List

The reason this matters isn't just square footage. It's timing. Most people who've been watching this project assumed the sequence would be straightforward: Whole Foods opens, then the rest of the retail fills in behind it, then maybe someday residential gets added if the retail succeeds. That's the pattern for most suburban anchor developments, because retailers are famously followers rather than leaders once a grocery anchor proves the traffic is there.

Instead, the city approved the second retail building and the residential expansion in the same two-week window, months before the first anchor is even scheduled to open. That's not phased growth waiting on proof of concept. That's a developer building density and retail capacity in parallel, on the bet that both will land around the same time.

For a corner that already carries 65,300 vehicles a day on the I-35 frontage, and where ShowBiz Cinemas alone draws roughly 463,000 visits a year, adding a second 140,000-square-foot retail building and up to 850 residential units at the same time is a different traffic and demand equation than the one most coverage has described. The lights at Covell are likely to see more pressure sooner than a slow, phased rollout would have produced, simply because two major pieces of the project are moving on overlapping timelines instead of one after another.

The Bookstore Question Nobody Has Resolved

One thread from the March council meeting is still open, and it's worth knowing about if you care about what downtown Edmond looks like next to this new corridor. The incentive agreement lists Barnes & Noble among the targeted retailers, but it also allows for a substitute retailer if Barnes & Noble doesn't sign a lease or occupy the space. During public comment in March, Lori Dickinson-Black, who owns Blue Bird Books along with Cafe Evoke, Twisted Tree Bakery and La Loba in downtown Edmond, told the council that the city already has three independent bookstores serving it: Blue Bird Books, Best of Books and Archive Books.

"These stores didn't arrive because of incentives or recruitment efforts. They exist because local entrepreneurs took risks, signed leases, invested their own capital and show up every day to build something meaningful to the community."

She wasn't opposed to the development as a whole. Her point was narrower: a fourth bookstore in the market, backed by a national chain and a city incentive, doesn't necessarily grow the pie for anyone. Whether Barnes & Noble actually signs is still unresolved, and the agreement's substitute-retailer language means it may never happen at all. If you're the kind of person who tracks which downtown shops survive a big-box neighbor moving in three miles away, this is the detail to watch rather than the tenant list.

What to Actually Watch From Here

If you live in this part of Edmond, the practical signals are simpler than the paperwork. The visible tell for the original Whole Foods timeline is steel going up around that pad, which should start showing up as 2026 closes out if the spring-to-summer 2027 opening holds. The Phase 2 anchor building now has an approved site plan, so expect grading and utility work on that second parcel well before the first phase is finished, not after. And the residential side will show up as platting and site work on the northern portion of the property, separate from anything you'll see happening around the retail pads.

None of this changes the daily-life geography of East Edmond much in the short term. Arcadia Lake and Mitch Park are still where the outdoor half of the neighborhood happens, and that isn't shifting because a grocery store and a few hundred rooftops are landing three miles away. What is shifting is the scale of what's coming to that specific intersection, and the order in which it's arriving. The version of this story that stops at "Whole Foods and Cooper's Hawk are coming" is true. It's just not the version that explains why the corner is going to feel different a year from now.

If you're weighing what a fast-growing corridor like this does to home values, resale timing, or whether a specific East Edmond neighborhood is worth a closer look, that's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks these filings as they happen. Homes by Matt Berry keeps an eye on exactly this kind of local filing, and we're happy to talk through what it means for your street specifically. Schedule a Consultation whenever you're ready.