The Willows Set a Date to Celebrate Building C. Half the New Storefronts Haven't Opened Yet.

When is a shopping center renovation actually finished? At The Willows, 1975 Diamond Blvd., the official answer was September 24, 2026. The center's owner, Regency Centers, scheduled a ribbon cutting with the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce that day to mark the completion of the Building C renovation and to welcome eight new businesses.

The answer you get on the sidewalk in early October is different. Four of those eight storefronts still carry "coming soon" labels on The Willows' own store pages. Building C as a building is done. Building C as a place you can spend an evening in is still filling in. The open half and the closed half also split along a clear line. The businesses already open cover coffee, lunch, dinner and shipping errands. The ones still waiting are the dessert, beauty and after-hours businesses, the kind that would keep people on the row after dinner and into the night.

What the September 24 Date Was Celebrating

The renovation turned the part of Building C around Eureka! into about 14,000 square feet of new retail and restaurant space. The center's project page lists more than storefronts. It also includes refreshed facades, upgraded patios, more landscaping and what it calls "thoughtfully integrated artistic placemaking elements." Construction ran in phases, and Eureka! stayed open the whole time.

The tenant schedule was the part that slipped. The project page said new businesses would open on a rolling basis starting in June, "with all eight new tenants anticipated to be open by the end of August 2026." The celebration was set a month after that target, which left room for delays. Even so, the delays outlasted the extra month.

The Chamber's listing described the event like this:

"This special ribbon cutting will commemorate the completion of the Building C renovation, welcome eight new businesses to the center, and celebrate the unveiling of a beautiful new property mural."

The listing planned brief remarks, the ribbon cutting, the mural unveiling, commemorative photos and light refreshments from one of the new tenants. The two public listings gave different times. The Chamber's page said 3 to 4 p.m. with the ribbon cutting at 3:30, and a partner calendar on MyGovTools listed 6 to 7 p.m. As of this writing, we haven't found a post-event report confirming how the day went.

The Open Half Covers the Daytime

The tenants that opened on schedule share one trait. Each one fits a weekday errand, a lunch or a dinner.

• Mendocino Farms opened July 27 in Suite C-114, serving sandwiches, salads and bowls.
• California Fish Grill was serving customers by late August. Bay Area Telegraph reported that it began "earlier this summer" but didn't give an exact opening day.
• Philz Coffee held its grand opening Wednesday, August 26, in Suite C108. It's Concord's first Philz. Its regular hours were announced as 5:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends.
• Postal Annex is labeled "NOW OPEN" on the center's project page and gives no opening date. Its tenant page describes shipping across UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service, notary, copying and private mailboxes.

Put together with Eureka!, which stayed open through construction, the four make a useful daytime row. You can get a coffee before work, pick up lunch, mail a package and come back for dinner. Philz's announced 4 p.m. closing time every day of the week fits the same pattern.

The Waiting Half Would Extend the Row Into the Evening

The four businesses still marked "coming soon" are the ones that would change the row's hours.

1. HOTWORX in Suite C-110 is the most unusual of the four. It's a roughly 1,500-square-foot studio where members do 30-minute isometric sessions such as hot yoga, Pilates, barre and stretching inside infrared saunas kept around 125 degrees. There are also 15-minute interval workouts on bikes, rowers and a total-body trainer. After an orientation during staffed hours, members can book workouts through the HOTWORX app 24 hours a day. The local team was aiming for late September. That date has passed, and the studio's own location page is still selling presale memberships with no new opening date.
2. Cold Stone Creamery in Suite C113 is still listed as coming soon, both on its official location page and on The Willows' site.
3. Boba Bliss has a center listing marked coming soon, with no published date.
4. Luxe Nail Lounge is in the same position. Its listing is up, but there's no date.

Three of these four are the kind of stop you add after dinner or on a weekend afternoon: an ice cream, a boba or a nail appointment. The fourth runs on booking at any hour. Once all of them open, the row's busiest times could look different from today, with more people around after dinner at Eureka! or California Fish Grill. Until then, the patios and new facades are finished, but the businesses that would draw evening visitors haven't moved in yet.

None of the four has announced a new date, so any guess would be speculation. The most reliable check is the business itself. HOTWORX's location page and Cold Stone's store page will likely update before any news story does.

The Wall Is the Part Built for the Long Term

The renovation also includes a new mural. The Chamber's listing says it was created by Noah Elias, a former local resident and current Disney artist-in-residence, and that his father painted the center's original mural. That connects the new Building C to The Willows that many Concord residents remember.

The project page treats this kind of art as part of the renovation itself. Placemaking sits in the same list as patios and facades. Tenants come and go over the years, but a mural on the property tends to stay. That helps explain why September 24 was framed around the building and the wall. Those were the pieces the owner could finish on its own schedule. Each tenant's opening depends on its own build-out, permits, hiring and franchise timeline.

The center also says "additional updates and future phases of the project will be announced soon." It hasn't said what those phases include, where they'd go on the property, or when they'd start. For now, Building C is the only defined piece.

The Rest of The Willows This Month

A short-term tenant is open elsewhere at the center. Spirit Halloween opened a seasonal store in Suite A-010 by late August. Bay Area Telegraph noted that the chain usually stays in a space for only a few months. If you're putting together costumes for the Concord Police Department's 5th Annual Trunk or Treat on October 24, it's a nearby stop. That event runs 3 to 6 p.m. in the police department's front parking lot at 1350 Galindo St.

Here's a practical October visit using what's open now. Start with coffee at Philz, eat at Mendocino Farms or California Fish Grill, and handle any shipping at Postal Annex. Take a look at the new mural and patios on your way through. Before planning around the other four storefronts, check their own pages. "Coming soon" has already lasted longer than the center's August target.

For more about Concord beyond Diamond Boulevard, our Concord neighborhood guide and our roundup of amenities and landmarks in Concord cover the rest of the city. Our look at Todos Santos Plaza's Music & Market season covers what happens downtown.

A shopping center's tenant mix is one of the things that shapes how a nearby street feels day to day, and it changes in small steps like these. If you live near The Willows and want to know how the Building C remake might factor into your home's value, The Corio Group can walk you through it with appraisal-grade data. Request your home valuation.