Ask anyone in Vestavia Hills what's changing in the neighborhood and they'll bring up The Bray. It's the largest project in the city's history, a 700-acre build-out on the last open land in Liberty Park, meant to become a live-work-play district with a hotel, a public park called the Grand Lawn, and enough retail to make Montgomery Highway feel smaller by comparison. When construction broke ground, City Manager Jeff Downes told the Vestavia Voice that if you went out there, you'd see cranes. That's the story everyone repeats. It's also not where the action has actually been this month.
The retail town center piece of The Bray, the part with the shops and restaurants everyone pictures, is still listed as not yet broken ground. What has happened, in the span of a few weeks in August 2026, is a wave of turnover in buildings that were already standing: a paint-your-own-pottery studio moving into a storefront on Montgomery Highway, a hardware store nearly doubling its footprint without leaving the block it's been on for years, a strength gym opening in Cahaba Heights, and the neighborhood's biggest existing shopping center changing hands for $76 million. None of it required new construction. All of it changed what's actually open near people's houses this week.
The Corridor Fills In While The Big Project Waits
The single largest transaction in Vestavia Hills this month wasn't new development at all. Burton Property Group, a Mobile-based real estate investment company, closed on Vestavia Hills City Center at 700 Montgomery Highway for $76 million. That's a 390,000-square-foot mixed-use property anchored by Publix that's already home to Taco Mama and Starbucks, not a rendering of something future. It's Burton's first acquisition in the Birmingham metro, and the stated plan is to upgrade the existing facility and build long-term value in it, not tear it down and start over.
That single deal tells you something The Bray's cranes don't: the smart money isn't only betting on new square footage in Liberty Park. It's also betting on a shopping center that's been anchored by the same grocery store for years, on the theory that fixing up what's already there and full of foot traffic is worth $76 million on its own.
Even inside The Bray, the turnover that's actually visible right now is happening in existing space. Caffe di Roma opened in December 2025 at a spot in The Bray that used to be a Papa Murphy's, and its owner is also behind the reopening of Napoli Pizza, a longtime local favorite, at its original location. Two restaurants, one owner, both operating out of buildings that were already standing.
What Actually Opened On Montgomery Highway This Month
Here's what the Vestavia Voice's August business roundup actually documented, block by block, all within existing buildings:
- The Kitchen by Market opened at 1031 Montgomery Highway, right next to The Picklr. It's the second location for Market, the gourmet grocery in Mountain Brook Village, and it's built around grab-and-go food including wraps, chicken salad, and Meats by Linz.
- Sequoia, a strength training gym offering one-on-one and semi-private personal training, opened at 3244 Cahaba Heights Road.
- Busy Brush Studio, a paint-your-own-pottery shop owned by Tori Dill, opened at 1425 Montgomery Highway, with classes ranging from couples' nights to kids' camps.
- Ace of the Hills absorbed Rainbow Paint and Decorating's products and services into its existing hardware store, a combined space nearly double what the standalone paint shop used to occupy.
- On July 21, the owners of the Ace Hardware in Birmingham's Crestline Park closed on the purchase of a lot for a second Ace Hardware location in Vestavia Hills, the one piece of this month's news that does involve new ground.
That last item is worth sitting with. An operator who already runs a hardware store in Crestline Park looked at Vestavia Hills and decided it was worth expanding into, on a newly purchased lot rather than an existing space. It's the exception that proves the rule: most of what's opening here is reuse, but the one operator betting on new construction is doing it because an established Birmingham retailer sees room to grow here specifically.
The Anniversaries Say More Than The Openings Do
Anniversaries are a quieter kind of local knowledge than grand openings, but they tell you which businesses have already proven themselves in this specific corridor. Three hit milestones this August:
| Business | Location | Milestone | What it signals |
|---|---|---|---|
| On Tap Sports Café | 11967 Liberty Parkway | 6th anniversary, $4 pints | One of The Bray's original tenants, opened before most of the current construction started |
| TherapySouth | Canyon Road and Patchwork Farms | 20 years since its first single clinic in 2006 | Grew from one location to two in Vestavia Hills as the corridor filled in around it |
| Toddlers Playhouse and Mobile Party Rentals | 2531 Rocky Ridge Road | 5th anniversary | A neighborhood fixture outlasting several retail turnovers on the same stretch |
On Tap is the one worth lingering on. It was one of the earliest tenants at The Bray, opening alongside Anytime Fitness and Publix years before the current construction phase. Six years later, while the town center it was supposed to anchor is still unbuilt, On Tap is the business actually celebrating an anniversary with $4 pints for regulars who've been showing up since 2020. The development's timeline and the neighborhood's actual daily rhythm have been running on two different clocks. On Tap has been on the faster one.
Cahaba Heights, part of the same Vestavia Hills business community, got its own version of this story with Miss Astrid's Tavern, which opened in the space that used to be The Fig, a beloved neighborhood restaurant that closed over the summer. Executive chef Jessica Armstrong partnered with Denise Boley, who owns the neighboring Resultz Day Salon, to bring Southern cuisine back into a building the neighborhood already knew.
Before The Market Wraps For The Season
If you've been meaning to get to the Vestavia Hills Farmers Market this year, the clock is close to running out. It runs every Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Scout Square on U.S. 31, next to Walgreens, through September 9, which leaves four Wednesdays left this season. More than 30 vendors sell produce, baked goods, flowers, and crafts, and the stall fees go toward buying produce for the Vestavia Hills Methodist Church's food pantry, so a Wednesday morning stop does double duty.
Football season is also back on the calendar, and this year comes with a specific goal attached. Vestavia Hills enters the 2026 season looking to host its first playoff game in 13 years, which gives late-summer Fridays here a different weight than usual. Between the market's final weeks and a season opener with something to prove, the next month has its own shape regardless of what's happening at The Bray.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
The lesson from this August isn't that Vestavia Hills is growing, everyone already knows that. It's that the growth showing up on the ground right now is concentrated in buildings that already exist, run by operators who looked at an existing footprint on Montgomery Highway or Cahaba Heights Road and decided it was worth filling rather than waiting on new construction. The Bray will eventually add its own retail chapter, but the retail chapter actually being written this month is happening in spaces that already had plumbing, parking, and a track record.
If you're the kind of person who tracks a neighborhood by what's actually open on a Tuesday afternoon rather than what's rendered in a site plan, that distinction matters. It's the difference between a neighborhood that's promised to change and one that's already changing, one storefront at a time.
If you're curious what any of this means for your own property's value while the corridor fills in, Hannah Sells Birmingham can walk you through it. Request a free home valuation and get a read grounded in what's actually happening on your street, not just what's on the rendering.
