Toys "R" Us used to have a store inside Winrock Town Center. That location is now a Chuze Fitness. The chain's other Albuquerque spot, at Cottonwood Corners, is on its way to becoming a Sierra Trading Post. Both closures trace back to the same 2017 bankruptcy that wiped out every U.S. Toys "R" Us location. So when the company announced this September that it's opening a new store at ABQ Uptown for the 2026 holiday season, it wasn't coming home. It was choosing this stretch of Louisiana Boulevard over every other retail corridor in the metro, including the one it already knew.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. A retailer returning to its old address is nostalgia. A retailer picking a neighborhood fresh, with the rest of the country to choose from, is a market signal. And Toys "R" Us isn't the only company reading Uptown that way this year.
The corridor that got a second look
Winrock Town Center spent nearly two decades as Albuquerque's cautionary tale about dead indoor malls. Darin Sand, senior vice president of development at Goodman Realty Group, has watched that story reverse from a third-floor office overlooking the property's two-acre park. He described a Christmas tree lighting last November that drew a crowd he called a sea of thousands, and a quieter moment not long after: a couple using the empty amphitheater stage to practice a dance routine on a slow Monday morning.
"That's cool that people are just doing that, and feel comfortable," Sand said.
The tenant count backs up what he's describing. Winrock has grown from seven tenants to 57 over roughly the last twenty years, according to reporting from the Albuquerque Journal published earlier this month. A separate Journal report has the property crossing 90 percent occupancy. Those aren't recovery numbers. Those are numbers for a property that's actively filling up faster than it can build space, which is exactly what's happening: Goodman has two more office buildings in motion, one of which will include a new food hall, plus a planned sports bar and a hotel with condominiums still on the drawing board for the next two and a half years.
Why the newest arrivals are the story
The tenant roster tells you more than the tenant count. This year alone, ABQ Uptown has welcomed ALO Yoga, JETSET Pilates, and Satellite Coffee. A few blocks over at Winrock, Taiwanese chain 85°C Bakery Cafe held its soft opening in early September, its first location anywhere in New Mexico, with a full grand opening scheduled for this October. It's part of a pattern Sand pointed to directly: several of the property's newest national tenants chose Winrock for their first New Mexico address, not their tenth.
That framing changes what the neighborhood is doing. A shopping center backfilling empty storefronts with whatever tenant will sign a lease is a recovery story. A shopping center where a Taiwanese bakery chain and a returning national toy retailer both pick it as an entry point into an entire state is something closer to a proving ground. Uptown isn't just getting stores back. It's getting first drafts.
The pattern isn't limited to the big anchors. Vellum and Vine, the city's first romance bookstore, opened in Uptown this year, according to Visit Albuquerque's running list of new openings. Near Park Square Market close to Coronado Center, Gimani has been drawing attention for pizza flights paired with soft gelato, a small-format concept that fits the same food-hall energy Park Square borrowed from the team behind Old Town's Sawmill Market. None of these are the kind of tenant that needs a press release. They're the kind that shows up because the surrounding foot traffic already justifies the bet.
What that growth actually looks like on the ground
| Then | Now |
|---|---|
| 7 tenants at Winrock | 57 tenants at Winrock |
| Toys "R" Us inside Winrock, later closed | Toys "R" Us returning to ABQ Uptown, across the street |
| Two Albuquerque Toys "R" Us locations, both now closed | One remaining ABQ Toys "R" Us, inside Macy's at Coronado Center, plus the new ABQ Uptown store |
| Winrock's amphitheater stage sat empty | Amphitheater now hosts a recurring fall concert series |
The numbers on their own don't explain why a resident would care on a random Saturday. The calendar does.
What's actually happening at the park right now
Winrock Park's fall programming isn't a single festival weekend. It's a running schedule that's been building since early September. The Sunward Amphitheater's fall concert series opened September 11 and had already brought in acts like deCasa and The Boomroots by September 25, with a night of traditional dance and Latin music slotted in between on September 18. Free Wednesday yoga at 6:30 p.m. runs on the park's grass through October. Plant Bingo shows up on a rolling basis at The Campground, the park's food truck lot. Artisan and craft vendor markets pop up at the park alongside the free amphitheater concerts on a recurring, not one-time, basis.
None of that requires planning a trip. It requires knowing the park has become the kind of place where something is scheduled most weeks, not just during Balloon Fiesta season or a single grand-opening weekend.
What the growth pattern says about the next year
The city's own transit planning backs up how much daily traffic already moves through this small a footprint. Around 10,000 people commute into Uptown every day, according to figures cited by the city's Uptown Connect transit project, while only a small fraction of that number currently live close enough to walk to work. That's the gap the next phase of development is aimed at closing. The additional office towers, the second food hall, the hotel and condominiums Sand described are all pointed at the same imbalance: a neighborhood with enough daytime population to support a 57-tenant retail base, but not yet enough housing to match it.
For a resident who already lives near Uptown, the practical version of all this is simpler than the development math behind it. The stretch of Louisiana Boulevard between ABQ Uptown and Winrock has spent the past year picking up businesses that used to require a trip to Santa Fe, a flight, or an online order. A Taiwanese bakery chain didn't need to test the market elsewhere first. A national toy retailer relaunching after a decade away looked at every option in the metro and picked here. That's not a neighborhood finishing a comeback. That's a neighborhood other markets are now watching to see what comes next.
If you're weighing what a home near this kind of momentum is actually worth, or you're curious how Uptown's retail growth compares to what's happening in the neighborhoods around it, Jenny Nguyen Real Estate can walk you through what it means for your specific street, not just the headlines.