Drive down Moraga Road this month and you will pass through two different versions of the same town. Rheem Valley Shopping Center has fresh paint on formerly tired stucco, a construction fence around a grocery store that is finally taking shape, and a strip of storefronts that look cared for. A few minutes away, the older Moraga Shopping Center near Moraga Way looks about the same as it has for years, still anchored by the Safeway that has served as downtown's default grocery option.
This is not a coincidence of maintenance schedules. It is the visible result of two very different relationships between the town and the people who own its commercial real estate, and understanding why one corner moved while the other didn't tells you something about how Moraga actually gets things done.
The Corner That Got the Memo
Rheem Valley Shopping Center spent much of this year under scaffolding, and by early summer the scaffolding came down to reveal repaired wood trim and a new color scheme across several buildings. The town didn't order the work. It asked. Officials had pushed property owners to make the center more inviting, and enough of them agreed to act on it.
The bigger project, a new Grocery Outlet near CVS, has not moved as fast as anyone hoped. The November 2025 groundbreaking pointed toward a mid-2026 opening, but that target came and went with construction still working through underground utilities and foundation work. By July, local reporting had the grand opening projected for early 2027 instead. Grocery Outlet has been opening stores across the Bay Area this year as part of a broader expansion push, and the Moraga location is one of the company's confirmed signed leases in the region.
Rheem Valley picked up another tenant announcement this summer too: a Chipotle is set to take over the space currently occupied by a Bank of America ATM machine. Combined with the facade work, it reads like a shopping center property owner who decided this was the year to reinvest.
The Corner Still Waiting
The contrast became public in February, when new Mayor Kerry Hillis used a Town Council meeting to say what a lot of residents had already been muttering for years. He described years of the town trying to build a working relationship with the owners of the downtown Moraga Shopping Center, including an upzoning of the property that the town estimated added tens of millions of dollars in value. None of it produced visible investment.
"We are all tired of beating our heads against the wall."
That line, from Hillis at the January 14 Town Council meeting, became the moment this stopped being a quiet frustration and started being town policy. By June, Town Manager Scott Mitnick's economic development update to the council was blunter still, describing the Moraga Shopping Center as heavily underdeveloped even as he highlighted the progress happening a few blocks away at Rheem.
The town isn't standing still on this. In January it signed a one year, $60,000 contract with Kosmont Companies for on-call real estate and economic development advisory services, aimed at facilitating private investment across Moraga's commercial properties. Early conversations are underway. But a consulting contract is a different thing than a cooperative landlord, and that difference is exactly what shows up when you compare the two shopping centers side by side.
| Rheem Valley Shopping Center | Moraga Shopping Center | |
|---|---|---|
| Facade work in 2026 | Completed, new color scheme, repaired wood | None reported |
| New grocery tenant | Grocery Outlet under construction, targeting early 2027 | Safeway remains the sole grocery anchor |
| New retail tenant announced | Chipotle, replacing a bank ATM space | None announced |
| Town's public assessment | Cited as a model for cooperative ownership | Called "heavily underdeveloped" by the town manager |
One Operator Betting on Both Sides
Here is where the story gets more interesting than a simple tale of one winning corner and one losing one. Ben Rojas, who opened La Chamba Taqueria at Rheem Valley Shopping Center in late 2023, is not treating downtown as a lost cause. He is taking over the former La Finestra Ristorante space at 1419 Moraga Way, directly across from the Moraga Shopping Center's Safeway, and turning it into a burger and arcade concept called Wayside Social.
La Finestra had operated in that spot since 2018, after its original Lafayette location was lost in the 2017 Lafayette Circle fire. It closed in June 2026, with its chef-owner citing rising operating costs. Rojas is betting that a more casual, family-oriented concept can succeed in the same building.
What that tells you is that the slow-moving landlord problem at the Moraga Shopping Center hasn't scared off every operator in town. Foot traffic near that Safeway is still valuable enough for a proven local restaurateur to take a second bet on it, even while the shopping center itself waits on its ownership to act.
What Else Is Changing This Fall
If you drive through town in the coming weeks, expect detours. The town merged its 2025 and 2026 paving projects into a single construction contract with Bay Cities Paving and Grading, covering five segments:
- Augusta Drive, between St. Andrews Drive and Spyglass Drive
- Rheem Boulevard, between 264 and 276 Rheem Blvd.
- Moraga Road, from St. Mary's Road to Moraga Way
- Canyon Road, from Moraga Way to Country Club Drive
- Wakefield Drive, from 22 Wakefield Drive to Corliss Drive
Work began in July on Augusta Drive and Rheem Boulevard, with that phase routing eastbound traffic through Harold Drive and Scofield Drive and adding roughly five minutes to the commute. The remaining segments on Moraga Road, Canyon Road, and Wakefield Drive are expected to move through construction as the project continues into fall 2026, so more temporary reroutes are likely before the work wraps up.
The Meeting That Could Redraw Half a Mile of Moraga Road
Separate from the paving work, the town is closing in on a decision that has been circling since 2013. The Livable Moraga Road project is looking at how to redesign the stretch of Moraga Road between Donald Drive and Corliss Drive, a segment where a traffic study found that fewer than a quarter of drivers were obeying the 35 mph speed limit and nine injury crashes occurred between 2018 and 2023.
The concept under review would reduce the number of vehicle travel lanes on that stretch, add protected space for bikes, and has drawn strong support in town feedback for a new signal at Corliss Drive. After a May walking tour and a June open house, the town has a virtual meeting scheduled for September 16 to gather final input before staff brings a recommendation to the Town Council in October. Whatever the council decides will shape how that corridor looks and functions for years, and it is one of the more consequential local decisions happening this fall that has nothing to do with either shopping center.
The Domino Nobody Was Watching
One more piece is worth knowing about, because it connects back to everything above. Saint Mary's College's Rheem Campus, near the shopping center that has been getting all the attention, is now on the market. Kosmont is in discussions with the college about redevelopment, and the school has said it wants to add on-campus housing and help make the area more appealing to prospective students.
If that land changes hands or gets redeveloped, it would follow closely on the heels of the shopping center's facade work and the Grocery Outlet build-out, adding a third significant change to that side of town within roughly a year. It is a reminder that Rheem Valley's momentum isn't just about one grocery store. It's about a corner of Moraga where multiple property owners, the town, and now possibly the college are all moving in the same direction at roughly the same time, while downtown waits for its version of that alignment.
None of this changes what makes Moraga worth living in day to day. But if you've wondered why one part of town feels like it's turning a corner while another feels frozen in place, the answer isn't mysterious. It comes down to which property owners are willing to work with the town, and which ones aren't yet.
If you're curious about how any of this might affect a specific street or property in Moraga, or you just want to talk through what you're seeing change around town, the Mary Bonham Team knows this market block by block. Let's Connect.
