How many errands can you actually run on a two-mile stretch of highway that, a year ago, had almost none?
That's the real question behind everything that's opened along Highway 395 and Newport Highway between Colbert and Mead this year. Not whether the corridor is growing, everyone with a windshield already knows that. The question is what growing actually means when you're the one driving it on a Tuesday after work. As of early September 2026, the answer has changed more in the last twelve months than in the previous ten years combined.
What Actually Happened on This Stretch of Highway
For most of its history, the Hatch Road and Newport Highway corridor did one job: it moved people from Deer Park and Colbert down toward the Costco, the box stores, and eventually Spokane. You drove through it. You didn't stop in it. If you needed groceries, farm supplies, or anything beyond gas, the trip meant merging south and staying there.
Three separate projects, run by three separate companies with no coordination between them, closed that gap inside the same 18-month window. A boutique grocery store opened in Colbert. A flagship farm-and-ranch retailer opened in Mead. And the first visible pieces of a 300-plus acre mixed-use neighborhood, built on the old Kaiser Aluminum smelter buffer land, started taking shape between them. None of these were planned together. All of them landed close enough in time and geography that the corridor now functions differently than it did in 2024.
Here's what that actually looks like laid out side by side:
| What | Where | Size | Status as of September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Midway Market | 16221 N Hatch Rd, Colbert | 18,000 sq ft grocery, bistro, and coffee roastery | Soft-opened July 25, 2026, grand opening August 5 |
| North 40 Outfitters flagship | 14411 N Newport Hwy, Mead | 113,000 sq ft farm-and-ranch retail | Opened October 2025, marked its first year with an April grand-opening weekend |
| Mead Works | East of Costco off Newport Hwy, Mead | 300+ acres, phased 20-year build-out | First-phase homes under construction, town center still in design |
The Grocery Store That Ends the 395 Merge
Before this summer, Colbert residents who wanted groceries had a choice between driving north to Deer Park or south toward Mead and beyond. Midway Market closes that gap at the intersection of Hatch Road and Highway 395, a corner that had functioned mostly as a pass-through for as long as most current residents can remember.
The store isn't a scaled-down version of a chain. It's built around ten distinct departments: a full-service butcher counter, an artisan bakery, a produce section stocked from Washington and Idaho farms, and an on-site coffee roastery called PURE Origin Bean and Process. The bistro and espresso bar serve made-in-house breakfast and lunch using the same ingredients sold on the shelves. Outside, a Sinclair station with the brand's green dinosaur mascot handles gas, diesel, and ethanol-free fuel for anyone just passing through on a commute.
The Deer Park Gazette covered the July 25 soft launch as the moment shoppers traveling the 395 corridor gained a genuine alternative to the big-box options further down the highway. The store's owner, Cary Snow, also founded PURE Coffee, which explains why the roastery isn't an afterthought bolted onto a standard grocery layout. It's the reason the store exists in the first place.
North 40's Flagship Already Has a Year Under Its Belt
A few miles south, North 40 Outfitters has quietly had almost a full year to prove out its bet on Mead. The company replaced its smaller store at 15228 N. Newport Highway with a 113,000-square-foot flagship at 14411 N. Newport Highway, a building nearly a quarter larger than the 90,000-square-foot West Plains store it opened in 2021.
The Spokesman-Review reported that the new location needed to hire roughly 30 additional employees on top of the staff carried over from the old store, bringing the total closer to 95. The building includes an indoor archery lane, a garden center, and a coffee bar called West Slope Coffee pouring beans roasted by Evans Brothers in Ponderay, Idaho. In April, the store marked its first spring with a three-day grand-opening weekend that gave away more than $33,000 in gear, including a tractor and a zero-turn mower, alongside the usual raffle prizes.
The store anchors what's now called the North 40 Retail Center, and it isn't finished filling in. A new 7-Eleven is already under construction on a pad site at the center, with additional tenants still to be announced. For anyone who used to drive to Spokane Valley or the West Plains for farm and ranch supplies, that trip has effectively been erased.
What's Still Coming at Mead Works, and What Already Has a Name
The third piece of this corridor is the least finished and the most ambitious. Mead Works is Greenstone's 300-plus acre development sitting on land that used to serve as a buffer between the old Kaiser Aluminum smelter and the surrounding neighborhoods. The Spokane Journal of Business has tracked the project since infrastructure work began in 2023, and the numbers involved are larger than anything else on this stretch of highway: 1,400 planned residential units, a million square feet of eventual commercial space, and a projected 20-year build-out.
Right now, the visible part is Phase One: a mix of single-family homes, cottage houses, and townhomes, with construction that began in 2025. The plan for what comes next includes a town center modeled loosely on Kendall Yards, Greenstone's better-known project northwest of downtown Spokane, though at a lower density with two and three-story buildings rather than the five and six-story structures found there. That retail district is still in design. It's not open, and residents shouldn't expect it this year.
What is already named, even before it's built out, is Fossil Park, one of the development's first planned public spaces. The concept includes two sculptures that already have names attached: the Guardian T-Rex and Bumpysaurus. It's a small detail, but it's the kind of thing that tells you a developer is thinking about what a family actually does on a Saturday, not just how many units fit on a parcel.
Two health systems have already staked claims near the development without saying much publicly about their plans. MultiCare Health System bought 30 acres just north of the Costco, and Shriners Hospital for Children later purchased 8 acres flanked by the MultiCare and Costco parcels. Neither has broken ground yet, but the land purchases suggest health care is the next category likely to show up along this corridor, following the same pattern that brought groceries and retail.
What This Means for a Tuesday Night
None of this replaces Green Bluff, which still operates as the destination loop it's always been, a place people drive to on a weekend for peaches or a corn maze and then drive home from. What's changed is the errands in between. A resident in Colbert can now pick up dinner from Midway Market on the way home from work without merging south toward Mead. A rancher who used to drive to the West Plains for feed and tack now has a 113,000-square-foot option a few minutes from home. And the empty land behind the Costco, which sat undeveloped for years after the smelter closed, finally has a name, a park, and a construction timeline attached to it.
If you're watching this corridor because you're curious about where North Spokane County is heading, or because you're weighing what it would mean to actually live along it, that's a conversation worth having with someone who tracks these changes as they happen rather than after the fact. Katie McDaris has spent more than 17 years working this market and the cross-border stretch into North Idaho, and she's easy to reach whenever a question like that turns into something more concrete. Schedule a Consultation whenever you're ready to talk through it.
