Drive down Moraga Road this summer and the shopping center at Rheem looks different than it did in the spring. The scaffolding is down. The buildings that spent years in chocolate brown and dark green now wear white and golden brown, with large gold lettering spelling out each tenant's name across the storefronts. It reads as a finished project. It is not. Walk to the far end of the center, past CVS and Home Goods, and you'll find the same construction fencing that has been there for the better part of a year, wrapped around a grocery store that was supposed to open months ago.
That gap between the two timelines is the actual story here. Moraga can repaint a building in a season. Adding one grocery store to a shopping center that already has the utilities, the parking, and the customer base is taking more than double the time anyone promised.
The Part That Moved Fast
The façade work at Rheem Valley didn't come out of a permit process or a tenant's own initiative. According to Lamorinda Weekly's July 2026 coverage, the Town asked property owners directly to get the buildings "spruced up" and make the center more "cheerful," and owners complied within a matter of months, repairing rotting wood and repainting over the old color scheme. Residents noticed fast enough that some were already asking, at community events, when the Moraga Shopping Center across town would get the same treatment.
That's the pattern worth sitting with. A cosmetic request from the Town, aimed at property owners who control paint and signage, turned around in roughly a season. Nothing about it depended on engineering, utility work, or a construction permit for a new structure. It was a phone call and a paint budget.
The Part That Didn't
Compare that to the grocery store. In November 2025, the Town held a groundbreaking ceremony for a new Grocery Outlet at Rheem, replacing a run of long-vacant in-line spaces. Property owner U.S. Realty Partners' CEO Jay Kerner called it "a major step forward," adding that Moraga had "just been one choice for groceries" and that the new store would be "a catalyst for the rest of Rheem Valley Shopping Center." Mayor Steve Woehleke said residents were "really happy about this." At the time, the project manager laid out three remaining construction stages, underground utility and site work first, then the 17,404-square-foot building itself, then interior buildout, with a grand opening targeted for mid-2026.
Mid-2026 has come and gone. A June 2026 Lamorinda Weekly report noted plainly that the store's targeted opening "will have come and gone as is evident by the current state of visible construction," with the developer's team saying only that they'd been "diligently trying to move construction forward as quickly as possible." By the July 2026 Town Council meeting, the timeline had shifted again. Town Manager Scott Mitnick's Economic Development Update Report now points to an early 2027 opening, well over a year after the ribbon-cutting ceremony and nearly double the window originally promised.
"This community is clamoring for positive redevelopment." — Town Manager Scott Mitnick, Moraga Town Council meeting, June 24, 2026
That line, delivered at the same meeting where the timeline slipped again, captures the gap well. The clamoring is real. The redevelopment is slower than anyone said out loud in November.
Why the Town Is Paying to Speed This Up
The grocery store isn't a standalone project anymore. In January 2026, the Town entered a one-year, $60,000 professional services agreement with Kosmont Companies to advise on real estate and economic development across Moraga, with Rheem Valley as a central focus. Mitnick has since described the Moraga Shopping Center, the smaller commercial strip across town, as "heavily underdeveloped," and Kosmont's senior advisor has been in discussions with U.S. Realty Partners about further changes to Rheem beyond the grocery store itself.
Two other pieces of that conversation matter for anyone paying attention to the corridor. A Chipotle is slated to replace the Bank of America ATM pad near the center's Taco Bell corner. And Saint Mary's College has put its Rheem Campus property on the market, with Kosmont in active discussions about redevelopment there too. The college's interest isn't incidental. Saint Mary's has said it wants Moraga's commercial core to look more vibrant partly to help attract students, which gives the school a direct stake in how quickly Rheem's transformation actually shows up.
U.S. Realty Partners is the largest of several property owners at Rheem, and none of the company's other shopping centers statewide include attached housing, which is part of why Kosmont's team has floated Moraga as a potential test case for adding residential units to the site down the line. Whether that goes anywhere, it signals that the grocery store delay isn't an isolated construction hiccup. It's one piece of a slower, multi-owner negotiation that the Town is now paying an outside firm to help manage.
What's Actually Different Right Now
For residents keeping a mental tally, here's where things stand as of this summer:
- Already changed: the façade paint and signage across most of the center; Moraga Jewelers has relocated within Rheem Valley to the space once occupied by Natasha Grasso Jewelry, clearing its old spot for the Grocery Outlet build.
- Under construction, delayed to early 2027: the Grocery Outlet building itself, still fenced off at the far end of the center.
- Announced but not yet under construction: the Chipotle planned for the old ATM pad.
- In early discussions only: any redevelopment of the Saint Mary's Rheem Campus property, and any long-term plan for added housing at the shopping center.
That's four different speeds moving at once inside a single commercial strip, which is part of why the center can look transformed and unfinished in the same afternoon.
The Center Has Always Changed This Way
None of this is new for Rheem Valley, even if the pace is frustrating in the moment. A Lamorinda Weekly retrospective published this January noted that the center has cycled through five different grocery stores since it opened, starting with Clark's Market in 1954 and moving through Petrini's, Apple Market, and the Safeway that eventually became today's T.J. Maxx. Through all of that tenant churn, one thing hasn't moved: the Rheem Theatre, still operating in the same spot it's held since 1957. Grocery anchors come and go on a multi-year clock. A handful of fixtures don't move at all. The 2026 cycle, paint first, grocery store slower, fits a pattern this center has followed for seven decades.
What Doesn't Wait on Construction Permits
While Rheem works through its slower timeline, the rest of Moraga's summer has kept its own schedule without needing a Town Council vote. The Moraga Park Foundation's Summer Concert Series, a tradition dating back to 1984, has already brought the Lamorinda Idols and Big Blu Soul Revue to the Commons bandshell on August 6, with a Taylor Swift tribute set from Dream Like Taylor and Cassie B up this coming Thursday, August 13, and a Fleetwood Mac tribute set to close the season on August 20. Parking at the Commons stays tight enough that regulars know to use the overflow lot on the west side of Moraga Road rather than fight for a spot near the park. Two days after that Taylor Swift night, Saint Mary's College hosts its Summer Wine & Beer Fest on August 15, with proceeds going toward student scholarships, before the concert series wraps up the following week.
Those events happen on the same forty-two-year clock every summer because they don't depend on underground utility work or a multi-owner redevelopment negotiation. They're proof that not everything in Moraga moves at construction speed. The shopping center just happens to be the one civic project right now where the gap between promise and delivery is visible from the parking lot.
If you're watching how a neighborhood like Moraga actually evolves, block by block and season by season, that's the kind of detail worth tracking. The Beaubelle Group has spent years following these shifts across Lamorinda because they shape what a home here is worth and what it's like to live in day to day. If you're curious what a project like this means for property values on your street, or you'd simply like a second set of eyes on your home's position in this market, reach out for a complimentary conversation.
