Drive past the old Macy's at Harford Mall this week and you'll see the east side torn open, steel and roofing exposed to the air. The Town of Bel Air expected about two months of demolition work when crews started tearing into the building on July 22, which puts the target finish around the third week of September, just a few weeks from now. The rest of the mall stays open during the work, technically. By mid-May there were only seven stores left inside, and one longtime visitor told CBS Baltimore what most people who grew up here already know: "This was the place to hang out on Fridays."
It isn't anymore. But the more interesting story is what's replacing it, because the corridor around that dying mall isn't getting one new dining scene this year. It's getting two, and they work almost nothing alike. Knowing the difference is the actual useful part if you're trying to figure out where to go this fall.
The Mall That's Disappearing in Real Time
Macy's closed its Harford Mall store in March 2025, part of a chain-wide round of 66 closures nationally. That left the mall without an anchor, and Spencer's became the latest tenant to lock its doors in mid-May 2026. What's left standing is the former Sears wing, rebuilt and reopened as the Shops at Harford Mall, fronting North Tollgate Road. The Town says those stores and restaurants stay accessible even with a demolition site next door.
The Macy's parcel itself is being cleared to make way for new commercial buildings, with a Whole Foods Market confirmed as an anchor once that phase is built out. Amazon Fresh is a separate, earlier piece of the same redevelopment, slated for the rebuilt former Sears wing. None of that changes what a Bel Air resident needs tonight, but it explains why this stretch of Tollgate Road currently feels like a construction zone that happens to have a few restaurants in it.
Next Door, a Restaurant With Nowhere to Sit
The most interesting new arrival on this stretch of Tollgate Road isn't really a restaurant in the way that word usually works. Wonder opened at 131 North Tollgate Road on April 9, 2026, and it operates as a digital-first food hall built around a central commissary. Food gets prepped off-site, finished locally, and handed to you through an app order, a kiosk, or delivery that the company doesn't charge for since it owns Grubhub.
The pitch is volume without commitment. A single order can pull from more than 30 chef concepts, including Bobby Flay Steak and Streetbird by Marcus Samuelsson, alongside things like Detroit-style pizza and Middle Eastern spreads from Maydan. One local reviewer who visited on opening day found the food hot and ready within about 20 minutes, ordered through the app for the easiest experience. The catch, if you're picturing a place to linger, is that the eat-in space is small. Wonder was built for pickup and delivery first and a table second.
A Few Doors Down, the Opposite Bet
Walk or drive a short distance to 609 Belair Road and you land in the exact opposite model. Burtons Grill & Bar opened there in mid-April 2026, inside the former TGI Fridays at Tollgate Marketplace, and it's the chain's first Harford County location and its first anywhere in the greater Baltimore area. The dining room seats 218 people. There's a patio, a private dining room for events, and a menu built around scratch-made American classics like crab-crusted haddock and a lobster roll. This is a restaurant designed for you to sit down, order from a server, and stay a while.
Here's the same corridor, told through two addresses that opened within weeks of each other in spring 2026:
| Wonder | Burtons Grill & Bar | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 131 N. Tollgate Rd | 609 Belair Rd |
| Opened | April 9, 2026 | Mid-April 2026 |
| Ordering | App, kiosk, or delivery | Server, reservations available |
| Seating | Small eat-in area | 218-seat dining room plus patio |
| Best for | A quick, varied order on a weeknight | A sit-down dinner or an occasion |
Neither model is better. They're solving different problems for the same stretch of road, and the mall dying in between them is almost incidental to why they're both there. Developers see foot traffic and a captive drive-by audience regardless of what's happening to the department store.
The Rest of the Corridor Fills In the Middle
Between those two extremes, a couple of smaller additions round out daytime options. THB Bagelry & Deli brought New York-style bagels to the mall's redeveloping edge, and Akira Ramen & Izakaya landed right next door to Wonder at 125 North Tollgate Road. Neither is trying to be a destination the way Burtons is, and neither is built around an app the way Wonder is. They're just filling the gap for breakfast and a casual lunch, which the corridor didn't have much of before this year.
Downtown Bel Air Chose a Third Option
While Tollgate Road collects national concepts and a genuinely new dining format, downtown Bel Air is doing something quieter. John Brown General & Butchery is opening a second location there, an offshoot of the original shop on Falls Road in Baltimore. Owner Voss said he was drawn to expand in the Bel Air area because he grew up there.
The downtown location won't be a sit-down restaurant. Expect coffee and pastries in the morning, then the same burgers, fries, and cold cut sandwiches available at the Cockeysville branch for lunch. Voss has said dinner service and a second-floor cocktail lounge are both possibilities down the line, but nothing's confirmed yet. It's a market with a counter, not a dining room, and that's the point. Downtown Bel Air isn't trying to out-scale the mall corridor. It's adding the kind of neighborhood stop that works because it's small.
What This Actually Means If You're Deciding Where to Go
If you want a weeknight dinner without deciding on one cuisine, Wonder's app-based ordering solves that, though don't plan on staying to eat unless the group is small. If you want an actual reservation and a room to sit in for a few hours, Burtons Grill's 218 seats and patio are built for exactly that, a few minutes down Belair Road from the demolition site. If you're downtown and want a coffee and a sandwich rather than a production, John Brown General & Butchery is aiming for that gap.
A quick reference for the year so far:
- March 2025: Macy's closes at Harford Mall, leaving the mall without an anchor
- April 9, 2026: Wonder opens at 131 N. Tollgate Rd with 30-plus chef concepts
- Mid-April 2026: Burtons Grill & Bar opens at 609 Belair Rd, its first Harford County location
- May 18, 2026: Only seven stores remain open inside Harford Mall
- July 22, 2026: Demolition begins on the former Macy's building, with roughly two months of work expected
By the time this demolition wraps, the corridor around it will have finished its own quiet split. One half of the new dining scene runs on an app and a commissary kitchen. The other half runs on reservations and a dining room built to hold you there. The mall in between is neither, and it won't be much longer.
Whether you're weighing where to grab dinner tonight or thinking further ahead about what a changing corridor means for the neighborhood around it, it helps to have someone who's watching these shifts closely. If you have questions about how Bel Air or the wider Harford County market is evolving, the team at TC Temple is glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
