Coming soon, slowly: how to read retail expansion plans before the store opens

Miss A, Rowan and HEYTEA are on US mall opening lists in fall 2026. Their public records show what each source confirms about a new store, and where the sources disagree.

In late August, the barricade in front of the future HEYTEA at Westfield Montgomery in Bethesda, Maryland, read “coming soon” with the last word crossed out. “Slowly” was written next to it. The Chinese tea chain had announced the store in February for a fall opening in the former Luggage Plus unit, and the new target was winter.

Most delays are quieter. Miss A, the Dallas beauty chain known for makeup from $1, planned to open its first Washington store at Alderwood Mall on September 5, according to Hoodline. On September 30, the brand’s own store locator still marked Alderwood as coming soon. The store may be open with a page that has not caught up, or the date may have slipped. From outside, the two look identical.

That gap matters most in the fourth quarter. Landlords want new tenants trading before holiday traffic, and leasing teams, brokers and investors use opening lists to build next year’s plans: which units are spoken for, which co-tenants are arriving, which rent starts to underwrite. A retailer’s expansion plan reaches them through five kinds of public evidence. Each confirms something specific, and none confirms everything.

The stated plan: a direction, not a count

Expansion usually goes public as a number. Miss A’s history shows how far that number travels. The company started online in 2013 and opened its first store at Grapevine Mills in 2016. In February 2024, with 30 stores, it told The Dallas Morning News it aimed for 100 by early 2026. A June 2025 release reported more than 65 stores and kept the target of 100 by the first quarter of 2026. The August 2026 coverage of Alderwood said more than 80.

None of these figures is wrong, and none of them is an audited count of trading stores. A stated plan tells you the brand intends to grow and roughly how fast. It does not name addresses, and it is revised as sales, financing and build-out costs change.

The brand locator: the brand’s view, future stores included

The next signal is a named address on the retailer’s own locator. On September 30, Miss A’s locator listed 174 locations, 41 of them marked coming soon, among them Alderwood Mall, Kenwood Towne Centre in Cincinnati and Park City Center in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

A locator pin is stronger than a stated plan because the brand has named a center in public. It still mixes two populations. Adding every pin together overstates the store base; counting only unlabeled pins assumes the labels are current. Alderwood shows the risk in one direction.

The mall directory: the landlord’s view, on the landlord’s schedule

When a center lists a tenant as coming soon, the deal is confirmed from the other side of the table. For most readers this is the most reliable public signal before construction. It can still disagree with the brand. In late September, Oak Park Mall in Overland Park, Kansas, listed Miss A as coming soon in its directory, while the Miss A locator showed the store with no such label. Stonebriar Centre lists Rowan, the nurse-staffed ear piercing studio, as coming soon in Suite 2228. Westfield Century City lists HEYTEA as coming soon on Level 2. Neither listing gives a date.

Two cautions apply to every directory. Listings can lag in both directions, staying up after a store opens or disappearing when a deal stalls. And a coming soon listing for a brand that already trades in the center may be a relocation, an expansion or a renewal rather than a new store.

Public filings and hiring: the closest thing to a schedule

The most precise dates before opening often sit in records nobody markets. Texas requires most commercial build-outs above $50,000 to be registered with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for accessibility review. Rowan’s Stonebriar registration filed May 15, 2026, describes a 1,142 sq ft tenant improvement: new partitions, ceiling, electrical, and plumbing, at an estimated $320,000, or about $280 per sq ft. Work was estimated to start on August 1 and finish on October 31.

That filing confirms the unit, the scope and the budget, and it shows a build-out in progress. It does not confirm an opening date. Completion estimates are entered at registration and may not be revised as work proceeds, and a finished space still needs fixtures, inspections and staff. Hiring is the other practical signal. Hoodline noted Miss A advertising an Alderwood store manager role at $54,000 to $58,000 a year. A posting for a named location means the brand is preparing to trade there. It does not fix the day.

The opening: the only record that settles it

A store is open when it is trading: a mall event listing, local coverage, the brand’s own announcement, photographs of the floor with customers on it. Rowan opened at Grand Boulevard in Miramar Beach, Florida, on September 1, in 534 sq ft, and at The Mall at Green Hills in Nashville on September 19. Those are the records worth keeping next to the original announcement, because the distance between the two dates is the most honest measure of how fast a brand moves.

What each source confirms

How to count a pipeline

Keep two columns. Announced locations go in one, stores that are trading go in the other, and nothing moves across until an opening is confirmed. Date-stamp every status with the day it was checked and the source it came from, because the same store can be coming soon on one site and open on another in the same week. When the brand already trades in the center, find out whether the new listing adds a store before counting it.

Applied to fall 2026, that method gives a clear picture. Miss A has 41 publicly named future locations, and at least two of them, Alderwood and Oak Park, show sources out of step. Rowan’s Stonebriar studio has a registered build-out due for completion on October 31 and no published opening date. HEYTEA has said itself that Westfield Montgomery moves to winter and has given no date for Century City.

The tenants behind the signs

The three cases also say something about who is signing. Miss A stores run 3,000 to 3,500 sq ft, and the chain took a 3,194 sq ft former Volcom unit at Boise Towne Square. Rowan told ICSC in 2024 that its units range from 650 to 1,500 sq ft; its founder, Louisa Schneider, said she was skeptical of malls at first and now leases from large REITs. HEYTEA already trades at Wintergreen Plaza in Rockville, where it opened in June 2025. Low-ticket beauty, a booked service, and a tea bar are all repeat-visit formats, and in Boise one of them is moving into a unit an apparel brand used to fill. Each of those leases was a real estate decision before it was a marketing one, and it shows up first in the records above.

Tracking expansion on Malls.com

Malls.com follows retailers in active expansion across the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East on its Retailers in expansion page, and shopping centers under development and recently opened on New projects. Center profiles, including Stonebriar Centre, Alderwood Mall and Westfield Montgomery, are in the Malls.com databases.