What’s Changing on Woods Mill Road in Town and Country

Drive south on Woods Mill Road past the Highway 141 interchange this month and you'll pass two entirely different stories along the same short stretch of pavement. On one side, a fenced-off construction site where a strip mall used to sit empty for years. On the other, a bubble tea shop that opened in January inside a storefront that used to sell toys. Neither of these things is news to anyone who lives here and drives this stretch regularly. What's less obvious is how they connect, and what the timeline on one of them actually reveals about how long "under construction" can really last in this city.

The Corner That Sat Empty for Years

The old Woods Mill Center wasn't a landmark anyone was sentimental about. It was a near-vacant, 11.6-acre strip mall southwest of Interstate 64 and Highway 141, the kind of property most residents only noticed when they needed to explain to a visitor why that particular corner looked half-abandoned. That changed on October 28, 2024, when the Town & Country Board of Aldermen approved a site development plan for a McBride Homes mixed-use project at Woods Mill Crossing, located at the same 14302 South Woods Mill Road address.

The plan itself wasn't small. McBride Homes proposed building fourteen condominium buildings and a multiunit commercial building with a patio, situated around about six acres of greenspace, replacing the strip mall outright. By mid-2025, the talk had turned into visible progress: McBride Homes began developing Woods Mill Crossing, a 112-home condominium community, with demolition of the existing Woods Mill Center underway and construction of the condos set to begin later that year.

What's Actually Going Up

Woods Mill Crossing is being marketed as something Town and Country hasn't seen much of lately. McBride prices the condos from the $720s, calling it exceptional value for new construction in an area where opportunities for new housing are increasingly rare. The homes use McBride's Willow floor plan, with spacious 2- and 3-bedroom layouts, open-concept living spaces, 2.5 baths, and private outdoor living areas.

"This is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to own a luxury residence in one of the most prestigious areas of St. Louis." Jake Eilermann, CEO, McBride Homes

That quote is from a company blog post published as demolition was still underway. Compare that to what the same company originally told the city. Back in December 2024, McBride's project representative told the Board of Aldermen, "We hope to start construction of the first building in the fall of 2025 with the first residential units closing toward the beginning of 2026."

Then and Now

That was the plan nearly two years ago. The plan today looks different. Individual unit listings on McBride's own site now show specific condos ready fall 2026 and others ready winter 2026, not the beginning of 2026 as first projected. And the fuller experience, the kind where a prospective buyer can actually walk through a finished model, is further out still: model condominiums at Woods Mill Crossing are expected to open for tours in early 2027.

None of this is unusual for a ground-up condo project that started with a demolition. But if you've been watching that fenced lot and wondering why it's taking longer than the news coverage first suggested, that's the answer. The timeline moved by roughly a year between the initial announcement and the current construction schedule.

Meanwhile, Across the Street

While the big project has been working through its permitting, financing, and construction phases, the retail plaza directly across Woods Mill Road has kept turning over in smaller, faster ways. The most recent example opened its doors in January.

Taichi Bubble Tea opened its first franchise location in Missouri at 1050 Woods Mill Plaza, debuting January 24 with a fast-casual menu of drinks and Asian-inspired food. The location is the first in Missouri from the New York-based brand, and it didn't land in a new build. The 2,100-square-foot space, which previously housed Bright Idea Toys, includes 38 seats.

The people behind it aren't outsiders to St. Louis dining. Co-owners Maggie Cheng and Wendy Chen bring about 30 years of collective experience at Chinese restaurants in the St. Louis area, and manager Brian Gohil, who has worked alongside Cheng in food service for more than 15 years, put the opening in local terms: "It's a privilege to support this historic suburb and provide a place for families and people of all ages to come in. We're open seven days a week and are happy to provide plenty of healthy choices to this community."

Taichi didn't open into a vacuum. It's one storefront in a plaza that's been quietly stable for years, anchored by a Schnucks grocery and filled in with the kind of small, specific businesses that don't usually make headlines but do make up daily errands. According to the city's own business directory, the plaza's current tenant list includes:

• Schnucks Woods Mill, the grocery anchor at 1060 Woods Mill Road
• Mike Duffy's Pub & Grill, at 1024 Schnucks Woods Mill Plaza
• Commerce Bank of St. Louis, at 1090 Schnucks Woods Mill Plaza
• Custom Cuts, at 1056 Schnucks Woods Mill Plaza
• Taichi Bubble Tea, the newest addition, at 1050 Woods Mill Plaza

That's the texture of the corridor right now: one side rebuilding from the ground up on a multi-year construction schedule, the other side absorbing new tenants storefront by storefront, the way it always has.

What Doesn't Move

For as much churn as Woods Mill Road has seen, the neighborhood's actual center of gravity hasn't budged. Longview Farm Park sits a few minutes away at 13525 Clayton Road, and it functions less like an amenity and more like the fixed point everything else gets measured against.

The park was purchased on March 30, 2000, and dedicated on September 22, 2002. Nearly 2 miles of hiking trails, both asphalt and woodchip, wind through the site to give access to the lake, and the land still functions partly as a working farm. The barn and pastures are home to horses owned by Equine-Assisted Therapy, a nonprofit established in 2003 that provides therapeutic horseback riding for individuals facing challenges in the region.

The park's calendar is the closest thing this stretch of Town and Country has to a fixed annual rhythm. Longview hosts the Turkey Trot, the Holiday Boutique, and an Art, Wine & Music event every year, and the grounds themselves are kept up largely through volunteer effort. The gardens surrounding the farmhouse are maintained by the Mason Ridge Garden Club, whose Master Gardeners have logged more than 10,000 labor hours since 2002.

Even the park's own maintenance moves at a different pace than a condo development. The city recently authorized a contract with Integra Construction Company for bridge repairs on the park's trail system, a routine capital project rather than a redevelopment, the kind of work that keeps a park now approaching its 24th year functioning without changing what it is.

The Corridor in a Sentence

Put those pieces next to each other and the actual story of this stretch of Town and Country comes into focus. It's not that the neighborhood is changing all at once. It's that two very different clocks are running on the same half mile of road. One side is on a multi-year construction schedule that already slipped by about a year from its original estimate. The other side turns over in a matter of months, one storefront at a time. And a short drive away, the park that residents actually treat as the neighborhood's living room hasn't changed its rhythm in two decades.

If you've been wondering what's actually happening on that corner, now you know the timeline. And if you've been wondering whether any of it changes what your own home is worth or when might be the right time to make a move, that's a different conversation, and one worth having with someone who watches this corridor for a living.

Medelberg Savage Group tracks these shifts across Chesterfield and the western St. Louis suburbs as part of how we advise both buyers and sellers. If you're curious what a changing corridor like this one means for your own property, reach out for a free home valuation and a conversation grounded in what's actually happening on the ground, not just what's listed on a spec sheet.