Queensbury Plaza New Businesses: What's Open and What's Next

Drive Upper Glen Street past Queensbury Plaza this week and you'll pass three different stages of the same story. A drive-thru coffee stand with a line of cars. A clothing store with fresh paint and a ribbon still visible near the door. And a low brick building with taped-over windows where a Mexican restaurant is supposed to go, eventually, on a timeline nobody's published yet.

For two years, that third building sat empty. It was a Red Lobster before it closed in the summer of 2024, and the site fronting Upper Glen Street has been the plaza's most obvious gap ever since. What's changed since spring isn't just that gap getting filled. It's that the plaza's owner has been working three vacancies at once, and only two of them have actually opened.

The Corner That Never Held a Car

The most visible new addition isn't in a building at all. It's a modular structure dropped into a corner of the parking lot that planning documents described as space rarely, if ever, occupied by vehicle traffic. That corner is now a 7 Brew drive-thru, and getting it there took more than construction. The plaza's owner needed a variance from the Queensbury Planning Board for parking and signage before the stand could open.

7 Brew's grand opening landed on Monday, August 10, following a soft opening in late July that did something a coffee stand launch doesn't usually do: it raised money for a local charity. Customers who came through during that soft-opening window contributed more than $26,600 to Double H Ranch, the Lake Luzerne camp for children with serious illnesses. That money came from neighbors ordering drinks during a few late-July days, before the stand had even held its official opening.

The stand sits adjacent to Moe's Southwest Grill and Olive Garden, both existing tenants, and it runs long hours: 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. For a stretch of Upper Glen Street that's mostly built around sit-down chains, a fast drive-thru option with those hours is a genuine change in what's available before the rest of the plaza opens.

The Clothing Store Replacing the Fabric Store

Burlington held its ribbon cutting on August 20, moving into the space Joann Fabrics and Crafts vacated when that chain closed under bankruptcy. This is the 76th Burlington location in New York State, and the Queensbury store carries the company's newer format, with wider aisles and updated signage. It's located at 756 Upper Glen Street, Suite 15, with hours from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Sunday.

Joann's wasn't the only tenant to close here. Tuesday Morning also went bankrupt and left a hole in the same shopping center.

The One That's Still Just a Sign

Mi Rancho Alegre is the piece of this story that hasn't resolved yet. The family-owned Mexican restaurant chain, which already operates locations in Hudson, Rochester, Lake Katrine, and Syracuse, is slated to take over the former Red Lobster building. Palumbo has described that outparcel site as best suited to a restaurant use, despite interest from several non-food tenants, because of the building's layout and its visibility from the street.

As of the plaza's most recent public update in August, the project was still described as being in the works, with no confirmed opening date. Nothing published since has moved that timeline. So if you've been watching that building for a sign of actual construction progress, the honest answer right now is that the announcement is further along than the storefront.

That gap between announced and open is worth sitting with, because it's easy to drive past three simultaneous projects and assume they're all on the same schedule. They're not. 7 Brew went from a bare parking lot corner to a fully operating drive-thru with a charity fundraiser behind it in under a month. Burlington's buildout and ribbon cutting followed close behind. The restaurant, sitting in a building that's been vacant since 2024, is the one still waiting.

What the Turnaround Actually Says

Palumbo has attributed the leasing momentum partly to rising tourism traffic in the area, telling local reporters that increased visitor flow through the corridor is what prompted these tenants to look at Queensbury Plaza in the first place. Whether that holds up as a durable trend or a seasonal bump, the plaza itself has gone from managing two bankruptcy-driven vacancies to fielding inquiries from other national retailers about the handful of spaces still open. Palumbo has said as much directly, describing ongoing conversations for the last few remaining vacancies.

That's the actual shape of what's happening here. Not three coincidental store openings, but one property working through a specific recovery: a parking lot corner has become a coffee stand, a bankrupt fabric store has been replaced by a national off-price retailer that's expanding aggressively across the state, and a restaurant is planned for the street-facing outparcel, which remains vacant. Two of the three moves are done. The third is still a sign in a window.

If you're driving Upper Glen Street this fall, the coffee and the clothes are both open for business now. The tacos are still a plan.

Queensbury's retail corridor keeps changing shape, and so does the housing market around it. If you're weighing what a shifting Upper Glen Street means for property values nearby, or you're just curious what else is moving in this part of town, Dina Coluccio is happy to talk it through. Let's Talk.