The Tapo Canyon Building Meant for Amazon Fresh Opens as Whole Foods on November 10

At 9 a.m. on Tuesday, November 10, Whole Foods Market opens its first Simi Valley store in the former Bed Bath & Beyond at 2631 Tapo Canyon Road. The company says it is the first Whole Foods in the Simi Valley area and its 96th in California. The building was announced for a different Amazon grocery brand more than three years ago. That brand is now closing all its stores. While the building sat empty, a run of smaller restaurants opened along the same stretch of Tapo Canyon and Cochran.

So the new anchor arrives after its neighbors. Here is how one empty building got from there to here, and what now surrounds it.

Three years of plans for one building

Since early 2023, the building has been planned as two different Amazon grocery brands.

In February 2023, the Simi Valley Acorn listed an Amazon Fresh for this address. In the same report it listed an Ace Hardware for the former Cost Plus World Market a few doors down at 2910 Tapo Canyon Road. The hardware store opened. The Ventura County Star reported a soft opening in April 2024. The grocery never did. By May 2023, the Acorn reported that Amazon was rethinking its physical grocery stores and had paused Amazon Fresh expansion. Amazon was still under contract on the space at the time.

The plan then reversed. In April 2026, the Ventura County Star called the building "long-vacant." The Star also reported that Amazon had recently said it would close all of its Amazon Fresh stores and planned to open 100 Whole Foods Markets nationwide over the next few years. So the same parent company is filling the space under a different name. The Fresh brand that was supposed to open here is closing everywhere, and this building outlasted it.

What actually opens on November 10

The details matter if this becomes your regular grocery stop. Regular hours will be 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, and Grocery Pickup will be added shortly after opening. The Whole Foods announcement says the store carries more than 1,500 items from California-based suppliers. A few of the names are familiar to anyone who shops this side of Ventura County:

• Produce: herbs and salads from Kenter Canyon Farms, collard greens and kale from Cinagro Farms, and spring onions from Coke Farm
• Cheese and charcuterie: Rumiano Cheese Company, Gusto charcuterie and Chuao Chocolatier
• Seafood: smoked salmon from The Santa Barbara Smokehouse and caviar from Tsar Nicoulai
• Beer and wine: MadeWest Brewing Company, Topa Topa Brewing Company, Figueroa Mountain Brewing Co., Broc Cellars, Jolie-Laide and Bonny Doon Vineyard, among more than 440 wines and 250 craft beers
• Prepared foods: hot and salad bars, pizza by the slice, a Market Sandwich counter and sushi rolled daily by Kikka Sushi

On opening morning, the first 300 people in line get a limited-edition Simi Valley tote bag and a Secret Saver coupon worth up to $100 off. Whole Foods is also making a food donation and a monetary donation to Food Share Ventura County.

The 10 p.m. close stands out on this block. Pozoleria Doña Ana lists daily hours of 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on its online ordering page. Once the grocery opens, Civic Center Plaza has a large store open well into the evening, next door to the Regal theater.

The neighbors opened first

Several restaurants within a few minutes of 2631 Tapo Canyon opened while the building was still empty. In January 2026, city staff cited Urbane Café, Chipotle and California Fish Grill at El Paseo Shopping Center on Tapo Canyon Road as recent food and beverage openings. Over the following nine months, more names were added to the corridor:

Pozoleria Doña Ana already runs locations in the San Fernando Valley, according to the Acorn's March report. Simi Valley Brewing Company took over the former Marie Callender's site on Cochran Street. When the Acorn covered its plans in 2025, the owners described on-site brewing, a barbecue-focused kitchen, a patio with live music, and cocktails, wine and nonalcoholic drinks alongside the beer. No grand-opening date has been announced yet.

The city's tax receipts point the same way. In the first quarter of 2026, sales tax from fast-casual restaurants rose about 8%, compared with about 2% for quick-service restaurants. Casual dining and specialty stores declined over the same period. That puts the corridor's recent openings in the category with the fastest growth. Assistant to the City Manager Angel Sierra summed up the second quarter for the City Council, as reported by the Simi Valley Acorn:

"We continue to see new businesses opening and existing businesses reinvesting in Simi Valley."

Civic Center Plaza is updating around its new anchor

The center's 2026 leasing materials call Whole Foods the anchor and describe a refresh of the façades, landscaping and lighting, with 1,088 parking spaces on site. The current tenant list includes Regal Cinemas & IMAX, Starbucks, It's Boba Time, Yogurtland, Wingstop, Panda Express, East Coast Pizza, Baja Fresh, Carl's Jr., Petco Unleashed, FedEx Office, Supercuts, Verizon, and branches of Premier America Credit Union and Wescom Credit Union. The same materials still show several available units, including space set aside for a restaurant.

Those open units fit the citywide numbers. Simi Valley's retail vacancy was 8.8% in the second quarter of 2026, down slightly from 8.9% in the fourth quarter of 2025. That is still above the 5.6% reported for Ventura and Los Angeles counties. Earlier this year, city staff pointed to tenant turnover, e-commerce, and spaces that don't match what retailers now want. A 35,000-square-foot former home goods store is exactly that kind of mismatch. Fitting a grocer into it took parking, loading dock and exterior work. Across Cochran, the same January city report said remodel work was continuing at Griffin Plaza at the corner of Tapo Canyon Road and Cochran Street.

Still in the pipeline

The next round of openings is set to bring more weekday traffic to central Simi Valley. Pennymac is finishing interior work at the former Bank of America building at 450 American Street and is aiming to open in the first quarter of 2027. The city's 2026 State of the City release says the move brings about 1,000 jobs. Other projects in city reports this year:

1. Dutch Bros Coffee: proposed 986-square-foot drive-through at 2135 First Street, in preliminary review as of October
2. Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers: application submitted for 2022 First Street, the former Black Bear Diner site
3. IHOP and Applebee's: the IHOP at 698 E. Los Angeles Ave. is becoming a dual-branded location, one of only a handful in California
4. Pickle N'Play Arena: indoor pickleball at 1457 E. Los Angeles Ave., under review in March
5. The Bunker Clubhouse: golf simulators and arcade games at 4180 Guardian Street, Unit 109, under review in March

None of these five projects has a published opening date in the city's 2026 reports.

If you live near Tapo Canyon and want to know where your home stands as Civic Center Plaza fills in, The Sarah Quaker Team can walk you through it. Request Your Free Home Valuation, and we'll pair the numbers with what we're seeing on the ground in Simi Valley this fall.