The Plaza's Comeback Is Happening on Nichols Road, One Address at a Time

The holiday lights on Nichols Road went up in the heat of late August. A Kansas City Star photographer caught a construction worker assembling strands along the street near the new Alo store on August 26, three months before the season they were meant for. Walk that same stretch this month and the lights frame a different street from the one they lit last year. A handful of the storefronts beneath them have new names. A few that held some of the Plaza's best-known brands are dark. Several are still behind construction walls.

Most of the Plaza's 2026 change, coming and going, has happened on this one street. Nichols Road is where the district lost its biggest names this year, and it's where the Plaza's owner is putting brands that have never had a Kansas City store before.

Where the losses landed

The Kansas City Star's late-August storefront count listed the high-profile departures by address. Nike, at 450 Nichols Road, closed in July. Tiffany & Co., at 301 Nichols Road, left in June. Johnny Was, the small corner clothing shop at 320 Nichols Road, also closed. Those three addresses run the length of the street.

Across the district, the Star counted 28% of the Plaza's 151 storefronts empty in late August 2026. In July 2025 the figure was 30%, a level the Star described as a possible historic low. Two points of improvement in a year sounds slow. That's because the district was losing tenants and gaining them at the same time, and much of both happened on the same blocks.

Nichols Road, address by address

From 301 to 450, here is how the street has changed.

That's three departures and seven arrivals or announced tenants on one street. The arrivals are bunched in the 300 and 400 blocks, and they come in a clear order. Alo and LoveShackFancy are open. The Reformation storefront comes next. Skims, Evereve and Jaxen Grey are on next year's calendar. On August 28, Star reporters watched crews demolishing the interior of 405 Nichols to get it ready for Skims.

Some of these openings drew crowds. On LoveShackFancy's opening day in March, about 100 shoppers lined up down the sidewalk to the end of the block. Evereve was on the Plaza for a decade before leaving in late 2024, so its return to 445 Nichols brings back a name some shoppers will remember.

Why the new names are ones Kansas City hasn't had

Gillon Property Group of Dallas, formerly HP Village Partners, bought the Plaza at the end of June 2024 for $175.6 million. Its leasing announcements keep using the same phrase. In its September 2026 announcement of rag & bone, the Plaza called the brand "the latest first-to-market retailer to join the Plaza's growing lineup of national brands." Scott Keller, Gillon's vice president of asset management, said in that release that the Plaza has seen "nearly one new opening each month since March."

March is also the month LoveShackFancy opened at 319 Nichols, so Nichols Road is where that monthly run began. The Reformation store at 415 Nichols and the rag & bone store coming to 4712 Broadway in spring 2027 are both billed as the brands' first stores in the Kansas City area.

"The word that's been tossed around a lot is 'momentum,'" Caroline Hogan, the Plaza's public relations and social media manager, told the Star. "I mean, we're truly building on top of each new thing that happens."

The corner where Nichols meets Broadway

The best example of how this works sits where Nichols Road meets Broadway Boulevard. Veronica Beard opened its first Kansas City-area store there on Thursday, September 3, at 4747 Broadway, according to FOX4. The space had been Charlie Hustle's, and the Kansas City brand didn't leave the district. It moved to 419 W. 47th Street.

So a high-visibility corner went to a first-to-market national brand, and the local shop it replaced moved one street north. Shoppers who knew Charlie Hustle at the corner will find it on 47th this season.

Off Nichols, the fill is quieter

The streets around Nichols Road have changed too, but there the new tenants are more spread out and more varied:

• J.H. & Sons, a men's clothier, opened at 314 Ward Parkway in April.
• Mersea, a women's shop, came to 602 W. 48th Street in June.
• Prize Home + Garden took over 439 W. 47th Street in December 2025, the former Moosejaw space, which had been empty since 2023.
• Louie's Reserve is the new name for Café Trio's longtime restaurant at 4558 Main Street. W. VinZant Restaurants, which acquired Café Trio in 2025, debuted a refreshed menu and interior in August, according to the Plaza Westport Neighborhood Association.
• Vertice Italian, from the local Summit Hospitality Group, is going into the former reVerse space at 618 Ward Parkway.

Mark Pred, a sales associate at J.H. & Sons, gave the Star the merchants' view of the pace: "We just have to be patient, so they get the right restaurants, the right shops and don't get anything that wouldn't fit into what they want to do."

What the storefront count misses

Some of the year's work isn't in any vacancy figure. In April, the carillon bells atop the Plaza's tower, which is modeled on La Giralda in Seville, began ringing again. Hogan told the Star they had stopped in the early 2000s. Crews also restored the exterior of the Plaza Medical Building at 315 Nichols Road, which sits between LoveShackFancy at 319 and the former Tiffany storefront at 301. Other projects included new roofs and fire alarm systems on several buildings, parking garage improvements, and safety bollards hidden in flower boxes outside the Apple Store at 277 Nichols Road.

Nichols Road is also where the holiday season traditionally starts. Last year's lighting ceremony, held on Thanksgiving night, November 27, 2025, put its stage at Nichols Road and Pennsylvania Avenue, and KC Current players flipped the switch. That team now has its own shop at 302 Nichols. Last season the lights also stayed up longer than usual. KMBC reported that the display was extended past the holidays and went dark on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2026.

The calendar behind the construction walls

Here are the Nichols Road storefronts still being built out this season, in the order they're expected to open:

1. Reformation, 415 Nichols Road, planned for winter 2026.
2. Evereve, 445 Nichols Road, early 2027, with Jaxen Grey slated next door at 437.
3. Skims, 405 Nichols Road, in 2027.

The next arrival off Nichols is rag & bone, at 4712 Broadway in spring 2027. All of this sits alongside the longer redevelopment plan that Port KC backed in August with approval of $1.49 billion in bonds for a 15-year Plaza revitalization. We covered what that plan means for nearby homes in our post on the Plaza redevelopment timeline. By the time Skims opens, the 400 block of Nichols Road will have at least four storefronts that were empty or changing hands in 2026.

If you live near the Plaza and want to know how this year's changes on Nichols Road might show up in your home's value, the Locate team can walk you through the recent sales near you. Start with a free home valuation, or read more on our Country Club Plaza neighborhood page.