Raising Cane's opens this morning at 3980 Rivertown Mall Path. The grand opening starts at 8 a.m., and the first 100 dine-in customers who buy a combo get a free hat and a Box Combo card. Anyone who registers between 8 and 9 a.m. has a chance at one of 20 Free Cane's for a Year prizes, drawn between 9 and 10 a.m. Winners have to be present, according to MLive. Regular hours will be 10 a.m. to midnight Sunday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
Thirteen days ago, a few minutes away, Dave's Hot Chicken opened at 3148 44th St. SW. It sits in the shopping strip near Target and Bucktown, and The River 100.5 FM reported that its October 9 opening was announced quietly on social media rather than in a press release.
Two restaurant openings in two weeks make the RiverTown area look like it's moving fast, and inside the mall that's true. The big pieces of the property are on a very different schedule. How fast something changes at RiverTown mostly comes down to how many owners have to say yes to it.
The storefronts are turning over this season
On September 28, WOODTV reported that RiverTown had signed 11 new tenants. Throw It Back Dirty Soda, which sells soda mixed with syrup and cream, opened in August. The other 10 are arriving between now and winter.
| Tenant | What it is | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Throw It Back Dirty Soda | Soda, syrup and cream drinks | Opened in August |
| MooZoo Slime Shop | Handmade slime plus a make-your-own "slime bar" | Grand opening was Oct. 17 |
| Sweet Kisses Bakery | Treats and custom cakes | Nov. 15 |
| Summit Comics & Games | Comics, board games, action figures, trading cards; second store after Lansing | Fall |
| Katie's Heart & Home | Christmas subscription boxes, decor and gifts; second location | Fall |
| Kako Claw | Family entertainment built around claw machines | Fall |
| Addiour Perfume and Ventrora Perfume | Two separate fragrance shops | Fall |
| Cell Repair Xpert | Moving from a mall kiosk into a full storefront | Fall |
| Snack'd | Snacks, drinks and candy from more than 40 countries | Winter |
| JD Sports | Sneakers, streetwear and athletic apparel | Winter |
Together the new leases cover 33,208 square feet. A single department store anchor takes up much more space than that, so 11 tenants add up to well under one anchor box. What they do give you is a lot more reasons to walk the concourse, spread across the whole mall.
Small leases move fast for a simple reason. A slime shop or a bakery deals with one landlord. Tennessee-based Poag Shopping Centers bought RiverTown in 2024 and has been working with JLL to fill the mall. In a follow-up interview with WOODTV, CEO Josh Poag said the mall would soon be 89% leased and that more leasing is in the pipeline.
Why more visitors brought the tenants
In that October 1 WOODTV interview, Poag described the leasing as the result of a plan to bring in more visitors first. The company started with $1.3 million in landscaping and parking lot repairs. It then put a large share of the money into Celebration Cinema, where upgrades costing more than $5 million added heated recliners, a "C Premium" auditorium and a lobby restaurant and bar.
He also gave the traffic numbers. In the 90 days before the interview, roughly July through September 2026, visits were up 2% over the same period a year earlier. On a base of about 4.5 million visitors a year, he said, that works out to roughly 90,000 more people.
"This plan of action that we put in place a couple of years ago is building that traffic over time, to the point now where we announced 11 tenants." — Josh Poag, speaking to WOODTV
The events calendar is part of the same plan. Poag told WOODTV that events "drive a lot of traffic" and that the goal is to bring in families and kids. That explains why RiverTown's October is so full, which matters at the end of this post.
The deck needs seven anchors to agree
The parking deck near Barnes & Noble is the clearest example of the slower schedule. Poag told WOODTV that when his team first drove on it, "we could feel the parking garage move underneath the car." Structural engineers looked at the options, and the company decided to tear it down.
Demolition still hasn't started. The property has seven anchors, counting the department stores, Dick's Sporting Goods, Barnes & Noble and Celebration, and a change that big needs approval from all of them. Back in January 2025, WOODTV reported a plan to start demolition that spring and likely finish that summer. That date came and went.
In the October 1 interview, Poag said he hopes demolition will wrap up next year. The plan is to replace the deck with surface parking and two outlots for new restaurants. He said several restaurants have shown strong interest but are "on hold, waiting for us to move forward with the demolition." Depending on how construction goes, he said, those restaurants could in theory open in 2028.
So the chicken openings this month are on nearby roads, and the restaurant pads Poag plans on mall property are still a couple of years away.
The former anchor boxes belong to someone else
The empty department stores are on a separate track. FOX 17 reported in April that Macy's had closed for good. Building owner Jonathan Bryant said interior demolition and reconstruction were underway and that two or three possible uses were under nondisclosure agreements. No replacement was named. Bryant said a finished deal could take six months to a year to build out, and he predicted the new uses would draw four to five times the foot traffic Macy's did. The mall said the Macy's building is owned and managed separately.
Poag confirmed that setup to WOODTV. The same owner bought the former Younkers building before Poag arrived and later bought the Macy's too, and "they own it, they control it, they dictate what they want to do." Poag has not been able to agree on what he called a developable price for the long-empty Sears site. Housing is "still part of the vision" for the property, but there are no concrete plans.
That leaves three separate decision-makers around one mall. Poag controls the concourse and can sign a bakery in weeks. The deck needs seven anchors to agree. The empty boxes depend on a private owner's choices and on a land price nobody has settled.
What the mall offers right now
With the big projects years out, most of what's changing this season is the calendar. In the MLive October roundup, the mall listed these as free events:
- Harvest & Harmony Fall Market, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24 and 25, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Local makers and small businesses will be set up throughout the mall. On Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m., Beau Fairman carves pumpkins live, with apple cider, apple doughnuts and jazz while supplies last. His finished pumpkins stay up afterward as a photo display.
- Boo Bash, Saturday, Oct. 31, 5 to 7 p.m. Trick-or-treating runs through the whole mall, with a DJ and a costume contest. Categories are Best Kid Costume, Most Creative Costume, Best Family/Group Costume and a Best in Boo grand prize. You can also enter an iHeartMedia Jingle Ball giveaway on site through Oct. 31 at 11:59 p.m. Boo Bash ends at 7, and WOODTV's 2026 list gives Grandville's recommended neighborhood trick-or-treat hours as 6 to 8 p.m. that night, so the two overlap by an hour.
- Sweet Kisses Bakery opens Nov. 15, the next tenant with a confirmed date.
- Santa photo visits start Nov. 22 and run through Dec. 24. The mall's Santa page has some leftover dates from past years, so check the hours there before you go.
- Holiday hours. The mall's posted schedule has it closed on Thanksgiving, Nov. 26, and Christmas Day. It's open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Black Friday, Nov. 27, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.
The mall notes that all activities are subject to change, so rivertowncrossings.com has the latest. Between now and the holidays you'll see new storefronts open almost every few weeks inside, while the Macy's building, the deck and the Sears site look the same as they did in the spring.
Changes at a property this size affect the value of homes and businesses around it, and that's the kind of local detail Ann Huizen follows for her clients across Grandville. If you're curious how this corner of Grandville is affecting your own home's value, Ann Huizen can walk you through it. Start with your instant home valuation.
