Why Trader Joe's Opened On Time At GSQ, and Fogo de Chão Still Hasn't

Drive down Bullard Avenue past McDowell Road today and you'll see the same thing you saw six months ago on one corner: a chain-link fence, a rendering board bolted to a post, and a footprint of graded dirt where a Brazilian steakhouse is supposed to go. Two blocks over, First Watch has a line for brunch on a Saturday morning. Both businesses were announced in the same city press release, on the same day, for the same development. Only one of them has actually served a meal.

That gap tells you more about how GSQ works than any single opening date does. If you live in Goodyear and you've been tracking downtown's buildout by press release, you've probably noticed the same names keep resurfacing months apart with barely updated information. The reason isn't that the city or the developers are stalling. It's that GSQ isn't one construction project. It's two, running on different clocks, and once you know which clock a given name is on, you can predict roughly when you'll actually eat there.

A Downtown Built In Two Layers

Goodyear Civic Square, the anchor for what everyone now calls GSQ, opened its public-facing side back on August 1, 2022, with City Hall, a two-acre park, and Globe Corporation's GEN1 office building. That part was finished on time and on budget. The retail layer, the 150-acre mixed-use build wrapping around it, didn't break ground until April 2024. So when people talk about "GSQ" today, they're really talking about a downtown that's roughly two and a half years into its retail phase, not four years old the way the civic square itself is.

That matters because the retail layer isn't uniform. Some of it is inline space inside already-constructed strip buildings. Some of it is freestanding buildings still waiting to be built from the ground up on their own pad sites. The city's press releases treat both categories the same way, one line in a list of "coming soon" names. The construction timelines do not treat them the same way at all.

The September Announcement That's Still Half True

Last September, the city put out a release naming seven businesses headed for GSQ: Fogo de Chão, First Watch, California Fish Grill, CAVA, Kura Revolving Sushi Bar, Nordstrom Rack, and Veterinary Emergency Group. All seven were described as opening "sometime next year," meaning 2026.

Eleven months later, here's where each one actually stands:

First Watch and Kura both got their doors open within five months of that release. Everything else on the list is still waiting, and Nordstrom Rack has since been pushed out a full year to spring 2027.

What's Actually Open Right Now

If you want the current, verifiable roster, here's what you can walk into at GSQ today. Trader Joe's opened November 7, 2025, and turnout that day was heavy enough to make local news, which tracks given the store had been the top request in the city's retail surveys since 2017. First Watch followed on January 26, 2026, at 1670 N. Bullard Avenue, a 3,700-square-foot space with a covered patio and interior bar that seats more than 160 people. Kura Revolving Sushi Bar opened in March, becoming the chain's fourth Valley location alongside its spots in Chandler, north Scottsdale, and Glendale.

Magdaleña, the Latin American concept from TPQ Foods (the group behind Pa'La Wood-Fired Kitchen and Tortas Paquimé), was aiming for a late May opening near McDowell Road and 150th Drive with a wood-fired menu built around shareable plates. Alongside that newer wave, GSQ's earlier tenants are still the backbone of the district: BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse, Copper & Sage, Over Easy, The Stillery, Dave's Hot Chicken, High Tide Seafood, and Bacchus Wine & Debauchery, plus Banner Health and Avila University Arizona rounding out the non-restaurant side of the square.

Goodyear Mayor Joe Pizzillo has called GSQ "one of the West Valley's premier destinations," and on the strength of that already-open roster, it's a fair description of what exists today, not just what's promised.

The Pad-Site Tell

Here's the pattern worth remembering the next time a new name shows up in a city press release. Fogo de Chão is going into an 8,460-square-foot standalone building at the southwest corner of Goodyear Way and Bullard Avenue. Firebirds Wood Fired Grill is doing the same thing in a 5,658-square-foot standalone building elsewhere on the property. Black Rock Coffee Bar's planned 1,460-square-foot store includes a drive-thru, which by design needs its own dedicated footprint rather than a slot in an existing strip. Veterinary Emergency Group is building a 24-hour animal hospital, also its own structure.

Every one of those is starting from bare ground. First Watch and Kura, by contrast, moved into space inside buildings that were already standing by the time their leases were announced. That's the difference between a five-month turnaround and a year-plus wait with no narrower date than "2026."

It's not a perfect predictor. CAVA and California Fish Grill haven't specified whether they're taking inline space or their own pads, so their timelines are genuinely uncertain rather than explainable by this pattern. But for the buildings where the square footage and format are known, ground-up construction is consistently the slower path, and it's the honest reason Fogo de Chão is still a fence line instead of a dinner reservation.

The Other Two Clocks Running At The Same Time

GSQ isn't the only thing being built in Goodyear right now, and conflating the projects is an easy way to misjudge when something near you will open.

• Goodyear Ballpark Village, a separate 7.7-acre retail development at Estrella Parkway and Yuma Road, broke ground in September 2025 next to the spring training home of the Cleveland Guardians and Cincinnati Reds. As of that groundbreaking, the center was nearly fully leased, with only about 13,700 square feet of space still available, so most of what lands there has already been decided even if the buildings aren't finished yet.
• Buc-ee's, Arizona's first location for the travel center chain, broke ground near GSQ (though not inside the district itself) last May and was on track to open this June, per the mayor's own state of the city remarks.

Three separate construction timelines, three separate sets of businesses, all inside the same few square miles. If a friend tells you "something new opened downtown," it's worth asking which downtown project they actually mean.

What To Do This Week

If you're looking for something to actually do tonight rather than something to wait on, GSQ's open roster already covers a full weekend. Brunch at First Watch, sushi at Kura, brewhouse standards at BJ's, wine at Bacchus, and a fresh grocery run at Trader Joe's are all live options right now near Bullard Avenue and McDowell Road. The fenced corners will fill in, most likely in roughly the order their buildings go up rather than the order their names were announced.

Goodyear's downtown is still being written in real time, and that's part of what makes it worth paying attention to instead of just waiting for the finished version. Whenever the buying or selling side of that growth becomes relevant to you, The Ackerman Team knows this market corner by corner. Work with Arizona Real Estate Experts who track these details before they show up in a headline.