If you moved into Avenir sometime in the last two years, you have probably marked May 21, 2026 on your mental calendar as the day the long-awaited Town Center became a reality. That's the date Publix started ringing up sales inside the new Town Center off Northlake Boulevard, the first major tenant in Avenir's planned shopping and dining hub. Walgreens followed not long after. By late May, GL Homes was already telling its Apex residents that the Town Center was open for business.
Then August happened. H&H Bagels quietly soft-opened on a Monday, held its grand opening the following Thursday, and Carmela Coffee followed with its own soft opening the next day. Earlier in August, on the other side of the community, the Great Egret Clubhouse opened its doors on 13 acres with a pool, a restaurant, and enough pickleball courts to host a small tournament. There was no single grand opening for Avenir. Each one was treated, correctly, as its own event.
Avenir's businesses and amenities are opening in installments, with more openings still ahead.
The Rollout Has Its Own Rhythm
Here is the sequence of openings and milestones:
- May 21, 2026 — Publix opens, anchoring the Town Center's grocery and pharmacy needs.
- Late May 2026 — Walgreens is up and running, confirmed in GL Homes' own resident lifestyle update dated May 28.
- August 3, 2026 — Avenir hosts a preview celebration for the Great Egret Clubhouse, complete with live music, ahead of the public opening.
- August 6, 2026 — Great Egret Clubhouse formally opens on its own 13-acre site.
- August 17 to 20, 2026 — H&H Bagels soft-opens on a Monday, holds its grand opening that Thursday.
- August 21, 2026 — Carmela Coffee soft-opens, the next domino in the same row of storefronts.
Six confirmed milestones in four months, and the tenant list still has room to run. That is not a delay. That is the model. Every one of those openings got its own press release, its own local write-up, its own small ribbon-cutting energy, because none of them was designed to be the last word.
What's Open As Of Late August
If you are trying to figure out what you can walk or golf-cart to, as opposed to what is still behind paper-covered windows, here is the breakdown as of late August.
Open and operating: Publix and its attached Publix Liquors, Walgreens, H&H Bagels, and Carmela Coffee. That covers groceries, pharmacy, and the morning bagel-and-coffee run without anyone needing to leave Avenir.
Confirmed but still finishing buildout: Seppe Pizza Bar, which will be the wood-fired pizza spot's first Florida address after two locations in New York. Smoke & Maple Gastropub, opening its very first location anywhere. Field of Greens, whose brand already opened two other Palm Beach Gardens locations on Donald Ross Road in March and April, with the Avenir outpost still to come. Venetian Nail Spa, Sloan's Ice Cream, and a sushi concept that has shifted names in recent announcements, listed as Taki Kappo Omakase in earlier tenant rosters and more recently as Tenka Sushi in Avenir's own August press materials. A sign from months ago may reflect an earlier version of the lineup.
The sushi concept appears under different names in earlier and more recent tenant materials; checking the latest lineup before making plans can help.
The Clubhouse Is A Different Project Than The Town Center
It is easy to lump the Great Egret Clubhouse in with the Town Center because they opened within two weeks of each other, but they are not the same build and they do not serve the same daily need. The Town Center, off Northlake Boulevard, is where you run errands. Great Egret, on the community's west side, is where you swim, play, and eat dinner without driving anywhere.
The clubhouse itself is not new to Avenir's master plan. When it broke ground back in May 2024, Avenir's own announcement described it as the third of four planned community clubhouses, with a fourth clubhouse still on the master plan and no announced timeline yet.
Even within Great Egret's own opening, the rollout has layers. The community-wide announcement on August 6 described a resort-style pool with beach entry, a lap pool, cabanas, hammocks, a full-service restaurant, and indoor and outdoor bars as part of what opened. But GL Homes' own note to its Apex residents, published around the same window, told a slightly different story for that specific neighborhood: the full-service restaurant and resort-style pool were described as arriving in a future phase, with the spa, card rooms, teen room, and party pavilion available now. Two builder communities, two different access timelines, same building. Residents can check their community updates for details on which amenities are available in their pod.
The Rest Of Avenir Is Building On The Same Schedule
The phased-opening pattern is not limited to retail and recreation. Health Park at Avenir broke ground in June 2026 and is planned to eventually include a neighborhood hospital, emergency services, inpatient beds, and medical office space. That follows the Palm Beach Gardens City Council's January 22, 2026 approval of an $18 million freestanding emergency room at the corner of Coconut Boulevard and Northlake Boulevard, a 12-bay facility meant to run 24/7 with its own CT imaging, ultrasound, X-ray, and lab services once it is built. Construction on that piece was set to begin this summer. None of it is open yet. All of it is coming.
Golf tells the same story on a longer timeline. Panther National's Jack Nicklaus Signature Championship Golf Course opened for play back in November 2023. Its 55,000-square-foot clubhouse is scheduled to open in Fall 2026.
One Practical Note For Getting Around
The golf cart paths connecting Avenir's neighborhoods to the Town Center and Great Egret Clubhouse work exactly as advertised for internal trips. What they do not do is get you onto Northlake Boulevard itself. Golf carts are not street-legal there, so any errand that takes you past Avenir's own boundary still requires a car, even if the destination is only a few minutes away by cart on the internal paths.
Keeping Up With Avenir's Openings
A community this size, with a Town Center approved for 200,000 square feet of retail and 1.8 million square feet of office space, was never going to open like a strip mall does. Instead of waiting for one finish line, the useful move is checking back every few weeks for updates, whether it's Seppe Pizza Bar's first Florida location or the fourth clubhouse, which has no announced timeline yet.
If you are watching how these openings are shifting demand and pricing across Avenir's different builder communities, or you are weighing a move within Palm Beach Gardens while this buildout continues, Sarah Gandrey has been tracking it closely. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
