Drive south on Hitt Road past Sunnyside and you already know the view. Bass Pro Shops on your right, Hobby Lobby beyond it, the Broulim's sign lit up at the edge of the lot. Keep going past Culver's and you're at Foothills Square, where a Café Zupas now sits in a building that didn't exist two years ago. Turn around and head back north into Sandcreek Commons, and by early September there will be a ramen counter where a vacant pad used to be.
None of this is scattered. If you've noticed that almost everything new in Ammon opens within sight of almost everything else that's new, that's not a coincidence of timing. It's the same half mile of road, developed by the same company, filling in one storefront at a time.
Two Centers, One Stretch of Hitt Road
Sandcreek Commons and Foothills Square read like separate shopping centers with separate identities, and in a sense they are. But they sit close enough on Hitt Road that Foothills Square's own opening announcements describe its location by pointing at Sandcreek Commons landmarks: "just south of Culver's restaurant and Bass Pro Shops," as Ball Ventures put it when it announced Café Zupas was coming to the corridor. Both developments trace back to the same Idaho Falls-based development company, and both have spent the past several years adding buildings to the same corridor rather than spreading growth around the city.
Sandcreek Commons is the older, bigger of the two, a 300,000-square-foot center anchored by Bass Pro Shops (Cabela's before its rebrand), Hobby Lobby and Broulim's Fresh Foods. Foothills Square is newer and smaller, built out around Café Zupas and a handful of other tenants just south of the Culver's and Bass Pro Shops that mark the boundary between the two.
Here's a quick side-by-side of what's actually landed on each in 2026:
| Development | Longtime anchors | What arrived this year |
|---|---|---|
| Sandcreek Commons | Bass Pro Shops (formerly Cabela's), Hobby Lobby, Broulim's Fresh Foods | Hokkaido Ramen & Sushi Bar, expected early September |
| Foothills Square | Culver's next door, walking distance to Sandcreek Commons | Café Zupas, opened January 15 |
Same road. Same half mile. Two different grand openings in the same eight months.
Café Zupas Picked Ammon Over Idaho Falls
The Café Zupas opening in January wasn't just another lunch option. It was the chain's first restaurant anywhere in eastern Idaho, and the company chose Foothills Square over a location in Idaho Falls proper to make that debut. The grand opening on January 15 came with the usual first-day perks, five dollars off a first meal and a free sweatshirt giveaway, but the more interesting detail is the choice of address. A regional chain expanding into a new part of the state looked at Hitt Road and Ammon specifically, not the bigger city next door, and decided that's where it wanted to plant its first flag.
That's worth sitting with if you live nearby. The corridor didn't earn a soup-and-sandwich chain because Ammon is quaint. It earned one because the traffic counts and rooftops along that stretch made the case on their own.
Ramen Is Coming to Sandcreek Commons
The next arrival is a Japanese ramen and sushi spot, Hokkaido Ramen & Sushi Bar, expected to open in early September in Sandcreek Commons, tucked in near Costa Vida and Roolee. This isn't a first-time operator testing the market. Hokkaido already runs locations in Idaho Falls and Pocatello, along with several in Montana, and the Ammon spot will be its third stop in eastern Idaho specifically. The menu leans on the usual strengths of the format, gyoza and bang bang shrimp as starters, tantanmen and spicy beef ramen as the draws, with the kind of slow-cooked chashu pork belly that ramen regulars look for first.
A company that already knows what eastern Idaho customers order isn't guessing when it opens a third location here. It's following a pattern that already worked twice.
McCowin Park Just Had Its Biggest Weekend of the Year
If the restaurant corridor is one half of what's changed in Ammon lately, McCowin Park is the other. Ammon Days ran July 31 through August 2 this year, and it's grown into the kind of weekend that reshapes how the whole park gets used for a few days straight. Friday night's Glow Night lit up McCowin North Field with hot air balloons, and Saturday brought roughly 150 local vendors and food trucks along with a car show and the Ammon Has Talent competition, all free to attend.
That's on top of what the park offers the rest of the year. McCowin has a nine-hole disc golf course that's free to play, a splash pad and swimming pool that run from the first Saturday in June through mid-August, four pickleball courts, two tennis courts and a 0.78-mile walking trail, according to the city's own parks page. It's the kind of park that earns steady weekday use and then absorbs a once-a-year crowd of thousands without missing a beat, which says something about how the city has planned around growth rather than just reacting to it.
What This Adds Up To
None of this, the new restaurants, the ramen shop still under construction, the balloons over McCowin Park, happened because Ammon got discovered by chance. A regional chain skipped the bigger city next door to open its first eastern Idaho location here. A ramen operator with two other successful locations in the region decided a third belonged on this same stretch of road. And the city's flagship park keeps adding amenities that get used every week, not just during the one weekend a year when 150 vendors show up.
If you live along this corridor, you've probably felt the difference without naming it. Fewer reasons to drive into Idaho Falls for a decent lunch. A ramen counter opening walking distance from where you already do your grocery shopping. A park that somehow handles both a Tuesday evening pickleball match and ten thousand people in a single weekend. That's not background noise. That's a specific stretch of road doing more work than it used to, one building at a time.
If you're weighing what that kind of growth means for your own plans in Ammon, whether that's buying, selling, or just understanding what your street is worth these days, Adam Walz knows this corridor block by block. Schedule your free consultation and get a straight answer about what's happening in your specific part of town.
