Drive past 6336 E. Santa Ana Canyon Road these days and the windows are papered over, the way they always are between tenants. What is going in matters more than usual this time. According to reporting from the Orange County Register, the store taking over the old Big Lots box is Trader Joe's Store 295, and it will be the chain's first location ever in Anaheim Hills.
That is worth sitting with for a second. Anaheim Hills is not a small community, and it is not short on grocery options. It has simply never had this one. The company's own site lists the address as "coming soon," with no opening date attached yet, which means the next few months are mostly a matter of watching the parking lot rather than marking a calendar.
What Anaheim Hills Village Has Actually Been
The plaza absorbing this change is Anaheim Hills Village, sitting on Santa Ana Canyon Road roughly halfway between the Imperial Highway and Weir Canyon exits off the 91. If you have shopped there for years, you already know it by its errands more than its food. The tenant roster reads like a checklist for a Saturday morning: Kona Cleaners, Edward Jones, H&R Block, Brickmarket Boutique, Anaheim Hills Tile and Stone, Top Nails, Salon Avella. Big Lots was the anchor that gave the whole strip its gravity. Everything else orbited it.
The food side of the center has always been smaller but locally loved: Slater's 50/50, the social-media-famous SugarBuzz, Pepz Pizza, Casa Rangel Mexican, and Yagi Sushi and Japanese Restaurant. None of that changes with the grocery swap. A Trader Joe's replacing Big Lots does not turn this into a dining destination. It turns an errand stop into an errand stop with better produce.
There is a detail about this particular stretch of Santa Ana Canyon Road that most people driving past never clock. The center's design borrowed architectural elements from the historic 1871 Peralta Adobe house, the same adobe that still stands nearby as a small museum. It is easy to miss because nothing about a strip mall anchored by a discount retailer screams history. But the bones of this plaza are older than almost anything else on that block.
A Few Minutes West, a Different Kind of Anchor
Anaheim Hills residents already have a second errand loop, and it runs through a different center for different reasons. Canyon Plaza, at the intersection of Imperial Highway and Santa Ana Canyon Road, has built its identity around Mother's Market, LA Fitness, and BevMo, with Corner Bakery, Starbucks, and Rock N Road Cyclery filling in around them. If Anaheim Hills Village is where you drop off dry cleaning and pick up takeout, Canyon Plaza is where you go for a workout and a smoothie.
Here is the side-by-side that actually explains the neighborhood's shopping habits:
| Anaheim Hills Village (6336 E. Santa Ana Canyon Rd) | Canyon Plaza (Imperial Hwy & Santa Ana Canyon Rd) | |
|---|---|---|
| Longtime anchor | Big Lots (closed) | Mother's Market |
| Fitness | none | LA Fitness |
| Grocery | Trader Joe's (coming, no date set) | Mother's Market |
| Food and drink | Slater's 50/50, SugarBuzz, Pepz Pizza, Casa Rangel, Yagi Sushi | Corner Bakery, Starbucks, Taco Mesa, Reunion Kitchen + Drink |
| Services | Kona Cleaners, Edward Jones, H&R Block, Top Nails, Salon Avella | Rock N Road Cyclery, US Bank, Chase Bank |
The two centers were never competing with each other. They were splitting the neighborhood's errands by category. What is changing is that one of those categories, everyday groceries, now has a genuine option on both ends of the drive instead of just one.
What Stays Exactly the Same
If you already treat Anaheim Hills Village as your dry cleaner and Friday-night sushi stop, none of that is going anywhere. The restaurants that built loyal followings inside this plaza are not part of what is turning over. Slater's 50/50 and SugarBuzz in particular have the kind of regular customer base that outlasts an anchor tenant change. The service tenants around them, the accountant, the financial advisor, the nail salon, are similarly unaffected. What is leaving is Big Lots. What is arriving in its place is a grocery chain this particular stretch of Anaheim Hills has simply never had on its own turf.
For anyone unfamiliar with the immediate area, the store sits within walking distance of Eucalyptus Park and the Anaheim Hills Golf Course, and it is a short drive from Yorba Regional Park and Deer Canyon Park Preserve, the same trail network that draws hikers and mountain bikers up into Weir Canyon on weekends.
When It Actually Opens
Neither Trader Joe's nor local reporting has attached a firm date to the opening. The company's site still lists the location as "coming soon" as of this writing, and permitting and buildout timelines for grocery conversions in existing retail space typically run several months from lease signing to opening day. The most reliable way to track it is the store's own locations page rather than secondhand chatter, since national retailers tend to update their own site before local coverage catches up.
What is confirmed is simpler and still notable on its own: after years without one, Anaheim Hills is getting its first Trader Joe's, and it is landing inside a shopping center whose real character was set by a dry cleaner, a tax office, and a handful of restaurants that never needed a grocery anchor to draw a crowd. The neighborhood's two shopping loops are about to look a little more alike than they have in years.
If you are weighing what a home near Santa Ana Canyon Road is worth with this kind of retail turnover in the mix, IMPACT Realty Group can walk you through it. Start with a free home valuation or browse the Anaheim Hills neighborhood guide for more on what makes this stretch of Orange County tick.
