Three years ago, the Ten Mile Road exit off I-84 was a Scheels, a few offices, and a lot of gravel. This spring it became something different. On May 5, 2026, developers turned dirt on 222 acres directly across the road from that Scheels, and by late June a four-story office building on the older side of the interchange had its final steel beam set in place. If you drive Ten Mile weekly, you already sense the shift. The point of this guide is to name it precisely.
Here is the thesis, and everything below is evidence for it: the Ten Mile interchange is no longer one commercial center. It is becoming two, on opposite sides of the road, built by rival development teams, and the quiet tell that they will eventually function as one is a road extension most residents haven't heard of yet.
The east side is nearly finished
The east side of the interchange is Ten Mile Crossing, Brighton Corporation's Scheels-anchored mixed-use project. It has grown into the corner most Meridian residents already know: Paylocity and AmeriBen offices, a Saint Alphonsus surgery center that took over the former Saltzer Health facility, and a restaurant lineup that now includes Café Zupas, Chick-fil-A, and Dutch Bros.
What matters for 2026 is how close this side is to done. Brighton's development president told the Idaho Statesman that the development has grown to more than 2 million square feet of commercial space and is roughly two-thirds through its anticipated build-out, with office, retail, and housing still to come. That's the context for the June 25 topping-off ceremony on the Sentinel, a four-story office building visible from I-84 at the northeast corner of the interchange.
The near-term additions on this side are small but specific:
- A new Swig soda shop opened at 701 S. Vanguard Way, west of Boise Juice Co., making it Meridian's third Swig and the Treasure Valley's sixth.
- Habit Burger is under construction at 445 S. Innovation Road, a 2,800-square-foot location with an outdoor patio and drive-thru anticipated to open in fall 2026, which will spare Meridian residents the Eagle Road trip for that particular craving.
- A new CapEd Federal Credit Union branch is also anticipated to open in fall 2026.
If you already live here, the practical read on the east side is that it's finishing, not starting. The parking lots and traffic patterns you've learned are the ones you're keeping.
The west side just started
The west side is a different animal. The District at Ten Mile is a 222-acre development that broke ground on May 5, 2026, and it is set to bring Meridian's first Target, an In-N-Out Burger, a Life Time athletic club, a handful of new restaurants, two hotels, and more. Ahlquist is leading the project on roughly 220 acres on the west side of Ten Mile Road at the I-84 interchange, directly opposite the existing Ten Mile Crossing.
The development team is worth naming, because it tells you who to watch as tenant announcements roll out. Lead developer Ahlquist Development is led by CEO Tommy Ahlquist, with partners Adler Industrial (CEO Mike Adler) handling the industrial and flex-building side and McAlvain Companies (president Torry McAlvain Jr.) on the build. Raymond Management Company is developing the two planned hotels.
The confirmed tenant list beyond Target and In-N-Out is deeper than the early coverage suggested. Other names projected to join the District's roster include Chase Bank, Taco Bell, Panera Bread, Mo' Bettahs, Zao Asian Grill, Handel's Ice Cream, and Tide Cleaners. The District will also be home to a 100,000-square-foot Life Time facility, two hotels, and a law-enforcement focused daycare. The Target is not a standard footprint either: at 148,000 square feet, it will be Meridian's first Target, big enough to reshape where residents drive for weekly runs.
At the groundbreaking, Ahlquist framed the project in a specific way:
"This is the opposite of sprawl; it's infill. It's exactly what we should be doing."
Whether you accept that framing or not, it's a useful lens. This is 222 acres of previously unbuilt land being activated next to an existing interchange, not a new interchange being cut into farmland.
The tell is a road, not a store
Here is the piece most residents haven't picked up on yet. Ten Mile Crossing and The District are being built by competing developers, on opposite sides of a busy arterial, at the same interchange. In most Treasure Valley history, that would produce two disconnected centers. It isn't going to this time.
The next key step for the east side is extending Navigator Drive west beneath Ten Mile Road to connect Brighton's project with the coming District at Ten Mile, and Brighton's president of development Jon Wardle called the Navigator extension an important investment in the future of the area. Under the road, not over or across. That is a small engineering choice with a large lifestyle consequence: it lets residents move between Scheels, the Sentinel offices, Target, and Life Time without adding a light cycle on Ten Mile itself.
The city sees the pressure. Meridian Mayor Robert Simison, speaking at the District groundbreaking, told the crowd of 200-plus that plans for the Ten Mile interchange have been on the table for about two decades. He also flagged the two variables residents already feel: Ten Mile has had traffic challenges over the past few years, and understanding what comes next means understanding the impact of Highway 16 and the Linder Road improvements.
Translation for Saturday morning: the interchange itself will get busier before it gets easier, and Highway 16 is the pressure valve.
What this changes about your week
The practical, resident-scale consequences over the next twelve to eighteen months:
- Your Target run stops being an Eagle Road run. The 148,000-square-foot store at the District is the first Target inside Meridian city limits.
- Your gym decision gets a new option. A 100,000-square-foot Life Time is a category most Meridian residents currently drive to Boise or elsewhere for.
- Your fast-casual choice at the interchange doubles. Café Zupas, Chick-fil-A, and Dutch Bros on the east are joined by Taco Bell, Panera, Mo' Bettahs, Zao, and Handel's on the west.
- Your office lunch radius shifts. Sentinel adds four stories of tenants on one side; two hotels and Life Time bring daytime foot traffic to the other.
- Your drive between them uses Navigator, not Ten Mile, once the underpass extension is built.
None of that changes today. The point is that the sequence is now set: Sentinel topping off in June, Swig open, Habit and CapEd in the fall, District tenants opening in phases across the next three to four years. Phases one and two of the District focus on retail, office, and fitness, with phase three bringing more leisure and walking areas similar to the Village in Meridian, and Ahlquist's chief legal officer told the crowd that in three to four years the project will feel complete.
The rest of Meridian isn't slowing down either
If Ten Mile is the loudest story, it's not the only one worth tracking as a resident.
- The Village at Meridian is expanding along Eagle Road. The Capital Grille filed permits with the City of Meridian to open at The Village, taking a nearly 9,000-square-foot building in the expansion area along Eagle Rd. Flower Child is opening its first Idaho location at The Village later this year as the chain's 46th nationwide.
- The Chinden corridor added Idaho's first El Pollo Loco. The restaurant opened on June 29 in front of Costco on Chinden.
- McMillan Road is getting a new independent restaurant. Permits have been filed for The Foundry at 1511 W. McMillan Rd, Suite 100, in the former Loose Screw Beer Co. space; project updates are valued at $185,000 for the 2,200-square-foot space, and Karl Pence is opening The Foundry.
- Detroit-style pizza and a Vietnamese bánh mì shop landed on the map. Boise Crust, the Detroit-style pizza food truck that reached capacity after launching in February 2025, is setting up a brick-and-mortar off Fairview and Locust Grove, and Pho 7 and Baguette opened January 15 as a new bánh mì concept from the Nampa restaurant Pho 7 and Bubble Tea.
- Eagle Road absorbs another Vietnamese spot. A new Vietnamese restaurant, Xin Chao, is opening in the former Urban Fox space at 2970 N Eagle Rd.
Read together, this is a city adding retail categories it didn't have and swapping in operators where older tenants moved on. It is not a city being reinvented from scratch.
The read
If you already live in Meridian, the useful frame for the next year is this: the Ten Mile interchange is finishing on one side and starting on the other, and a Navigator Drive underpass will decide whether it feels like one place or two. Everything else, from the Capital Grille to El Pollo Loco to the Foundry, is texture on top of that structural change.
The traffic will get worse before Highway 16 and the Linder Road improvements catch up. The retail mix will get broader before phase three of the District brings the walking-area feel that residents of the Village already know. Both of those are worth planning around, whether you're deciding which corner of town to run errands in on a Saturday or thinking about how this changes the daily rhythm of the house you already own.
If you're weighing what all of this means for property values on your specific street, or you know someone considering a move into or out of Meridian this year, that's a conversation Kent Davies has every week. Download My Free Relocation Guide to see how neighborhood-level shifts like the Ten Mile buildout factor into a real Treasure Valley decision.
