Dillons Marketplace just broke ground on a new storefront in Olathe, marking the grocery chain's first return to the Kansas City metro area in about 18 years. The $40 million investment will rise at the corner of College Boulevard and Sunnybrook Boulevard, directly across from Meadow Lane Elementary School and the Olathe Innovation Campus, which includes Kansas State University-Olathe.
The groundbreaking, reported by FOX4KC, caps a long municipal process. The Olathe City Council voted in March 2026 to approve the rezoning ordinance and final plat for the 14.11-acre Sunnybrook Business Park site, clearing the way for construction after the Olathe Planning Commission had already recommended approval by a unanimous 7-0 vote, according to Citizen Portal.
Per the Olathe Chamber of Commerce, bringing Dillons Marketplace back has been a common request from residents for years. Dillons is billed as a one-stop grocery store offering fresh produce, meat and seafood, dry goods, home supplies and health products.
A Much Bigger Footprint Than Before
The new 99,982-square-foot facility will include a drive-through pharmacy, an online order pickup area, and a 14-pump fuel station. City officials granted three design waivers covering building footprint, glass coverage, and loading dock placement, but required enhanced masonry finishes and screening landscaping to offset those concessions, per the same Citizen Portal report.
Dillons previously operated two stores in Olathe before exiting the Kansas City market in 2008 — one at Santa Fe Street and Buchanan Street, and another at 151st Street and Mur-Len Road. As part of its 2008 regional reshuffle, Dillons transferred its Kansas City-area stores to Kansas City, Kansas-based Associated Wholesale Grocers, which resold them to independent operators, while Dillons acquired five stores in Wichita and Topeka to consolidate its core Kansas footprint, according to Supermarket News.
Returning to a Crowded Grocery Battlefield
Founded in Sterling, Kansas, in 1890 and acquired by Cincinnati-based Kroger Co. in 1983, Dillons now operates more than 60 supermarkets across Kansas, giving it the largest total supermarket store count in the state. The chain's return will drop it into a suburban retail corridor already home to an Aldi, a Hy-Vee, a Walmart Supercenter, and two McKeever's Price Chopper locations, all within a few miles of the new site — an area where Walmart and Price Chopper are the most common banners, according to the trade outlet.
Olathe's appeal as the flagship site is tied to its demographics. The city's population is 152,854, with a median household income of $103,821, making it a fast-growing city in Johnson County, according to the City of Olathe. Olathe is the county seat of Johnson County and the fourth-largest city in Kansas.
Part of a Bigger Regional Comeback
The Olathe store is the anchor of a broader Kansas City metro expansion by parent company Kroger. As Hoodline reported in August, Kroger is also seeking approvals to redevelop a shuttered 120,000-square-foot JCPenney in Independence, Missouri, and has proposed another store in Kansas City's Northland near Tiffany Springs Road — a plan that has drawn pushback from local gas station owners over the proposed fuel pumps.
The Olathe project's fall 2027 opening target is separate from a $160 million plan for four Dallas-Fort Worth Marketplace locations. The site itself is part of the Sunnybrook Business Park 4th Plat, per Ingram's Magazine. For Olathe residents who have waited nearly two decades, the groundbreaking means a long-requested grocer is finally, officially on its way back.
