If you've lived in Commerce Township for more than a year, you've heard some version of the same sentence at least three times: the new downtown is opening this fall. It was supposed to happen in 2017. Then 2025. Then this year. Every time, the promise gets a little more specific and the actual ribbon-cutting slides a little further out.
Here's what's true as of this September: one half of Five & Main has been open and full of residents for almost a year. The other half, the part with the coffee shop and the restaurant and the reason anyone would actually walk over there, hasn't broken ground on its first building's interior yet. Understanding that split, and why it exists, tells you more about what your fall actually looks like than any rendering the developer has put out.
The Half That's Already Done
Springs at Five & Main, the 284-unit apartment community at 1000 Pinewood Avenue, had its grand opening announced by Continental Properties last September. Nearly a year later, the reviews are in, units are turning over on normal lease cycles, and the leasing office is staffed the way an established property's leasing office is staffed, not the way a brand-new building's is. If you've driven past and noticed the parking lot looks lived-in, that's because it is. This part of the project is finished, occupied, and no longer news.
That matters because it's easy to look at those apartments, the landscaping, the pool, and assume the rest of Five & Main is on the same timeline. It isn't. Continental Properties built and delivered the residential piece on its own schedule, separate from the retail development next door, and that separation is exactly why the coffee shop everyone's been waiting for still doesn't exist.
The Half That Isn't
The retail component of Five & Main, the part designed to actually function as a downtown, is centered on a building the township's own planning department calls Building G. It's a 15,000-square-foot multi-tenant retail building proposed just west of the Dort Financial Credit Union branch that's currently under construction, and it's the very first commercial building planned for the entire site.
According to Commerce Township's Planning Department monthly report from March 2026, the development team at Robert B. Aikens & Associates told the township they intend to have Building G "complete and occupiable" by the end of 2026. Read that phrase carefully, because it's doing a lot of work. Complete and occupiable means the shell exists and the space can legally be handed to tenants. It does not mean the coffee is brewing. Tenant buildout, the actual construction of a storefront, kitchen, and dining room inside that shell, typically adds months after a landlord hands over the keys.
And the tenants themselves are still prospective, not signed and open. The same planning report lists the intended mix for Building G as a drive-through coffee shop on one end, a sit-down restaurant with a Class C liquor license on the other, and personal service businesses like a spa, a fitness studio, and a dog grooming operation filling the space in between. Nobody has confirmed names yet. What we have is a floor plan concept, not a grand opening date.
If Building G hits its own target of "occupiable by the end of 2026," the earliest a resident could realistically expect a working coffee shop or restaurant there is sometime in 2027.
That's not a guess dressed up as fact. It's what happens when you take the township's own construction timeline and add the buildout period any new restaurant needs before it can open its doors.
Why the Trail Behind Your House Is Closed
If you walk or bike the Commerce Towne Place Pathways, you've probably already run into the barricades. The township's own notice board lists the Lake Trail as closed between Avalon and Walmart until further notice, with construction listed as the reason. That closure lines up with what's actually happening on the ground: the same March 2026 planning report describes construction of "Main Street," the east-to-west road that will cut through Five & Main and connect to Martin Parkway via a right-in, right-out driveway between Pontiac Trail and Library Drive.
Roads and site utilities don't build themselves around an existing pedestrian trail. When a development this size is threading a new street through the middle of a site, a trail segment closing for a season is a normal, if annoying, consequence. It's also a small, physical piece of proof that construction on the retail side is genuinely underway, even if nothing visible to a driver passing at 40 miles per hour looks finished yet.
The Corner Everyone Forgets
Five & Main gets most of the attention, but it isn't the only thing changing at that intersection. LaFontaine Automotive Group is adding Hyundai and Genesis dealerships at the northwest corner of Pontiac Trail and Martin Parkway, directly across from the lifestyle center itself, according to reporting on the broader Commerce Towne Place buildout. That's a different developer, a different use, and a different timeline entirely, but it's part of why the whole intersection looks like a construction zone right now rather than a single, contained project with one finish line.
A few hundred yards away on West Commerce Road, a much smaller story is unfolding at the Marathon gas station. Sisters Farah Orow and Marah Karana, who run a local business known for their chicken tenders, brought a concept plan to the Planning Commission in March for a two-story, ten-unit condominium building on the parcels south and southeast of the existing station. The plan would require demolishing an existing house at 4645 Broadway and rezoning four of the five involved properties, which currently sit under a designation that doesn't allow attached residential. It's early, and it's a fraction of the scale of Five & Main, but it's another data point in the same pattern: land near this corridor is getting a second look, one small parcel at a time.
What This Actually Means for Your Fall
Here's the honest summary. If you're picturing a stroll to a new coffee shop or a Friday night dinner at the new restaurant before the holidays, that's not where things stand. What's actually available to you right now:
- A finished, occupied apartment community at Springs at Five & Main, which has been open since last fall
- A construction site for Building G, the first retail building, targeting completion (not tenant opening) by the end of this year
- A closed trail segment on the Commerce Towne Place Pathways while Main Street gets built through the site
- A dealership project taking shape at the opposite corner
- An early-stage rezoning conversation for a small residential infill project down the road at the Marathon station
None of that is a criticism of the project. Two former golf courses becoming a walkable mixed-use center, funded in part by $80 million in bonds the Downtown Development Authority issued to assemble the land and build the roundabout and Martin Parkway extension that made this whole corridor buildable in the first place, was never going to happen on a single-season timeline. What's worth knowing is where the project actually is today, not where the renderings say it will eventually be.
If you're the kind of resident who checks the township's news page or drives past that intersection wondering what's changed, the honest answer this September is: less than the buzz suggests, but more than nothing. The apartments are real and full. The rest is still mostly steel, permits, and a tenant list with two blanks in it.
If you've got questions about how this corner of Commerce Township is shaping up, whether it's about Five & Main, the trail closures, or anything else changing in the neighborhood, Anne Shields keeps a close eye on this stuff because she lives and works right here. Schedule a Free Consultation anytime you want a straight answer about what's actually happening in Commerce Township, not just what the press releases say.
