Devon Yard has been open long enough that a kid born the year it opened is closing in on a driver's permit. The lifestyle center that Anthropologie's parent company built on six acres next to the historic Devon Horse Show grounds opened its doors on August 16, 2018, and every Fall Classic since has landed on a corridor where the restaurants were already running, the tables were already turning over, and residents already knew where to eat before heading over to the Dixon Oval.
Two blocks west on the same road, a mosaic-tiled restaurant complex that once housed La Jonquille and Shiraz has spent almost that entire stretch sitting empty. It has a new owner now, a name for what's coming, and a building permit's worth of renovation underway. What it does not have, as this year's Fall Classic approaches, is a confirmed opening date. And the target it was given has already come and gone.
This is the version of Devon that residents are actually walking into this September: one long-vacant address still dark, one long-settled complex still doing exactly what it's done for eight years, and a horse show that runs on its own calendar regardless of what's finished on Lancaster Avenue by the time it starts.
Same Road, Different Decades
The building at 840 Lancaster Avenue, at the corner of Berkley Road in Tredyffrin Township, spans two buildings and roughly 32,000 square feet on about two acres, with 130 parking spaces attached. La Jonquille and Shiraz closed there in 2001, and Shiraz made a few attempts at reopening starting around 2003 before the whole complex shut for good a few years later. From that point it sat idle, subdivided in part into offices, largely forgotten by anyone who wasn't driving past it on the way to Devon Yard or the showgrounds.
That changed in 2025. Rich Kim, owner of the well-regarded Salt Korean BBQ in North Wales, closed on the purchase of the property in August of that year, with commercial real estate firm Avison Young brokering the sale. The plan Kim laid out to the Philadelphia Inquirer called for a second Salt location on the ground floor and a fine-dining Japanese restaurant upstairs, one built around a Korean omakase experience the Inquirer described as the first of its kind in the Philadelphia area. Kim has said he intends to keep some of the building's elaborate original decor while reworking the rest of the space into something with an open kitchen and a fresh, contemporary feel.
The timeline for getting there has already moved once. Back in April 2025, before the sale even closed, Kim told the Inquirer he hoped to open within about eight months, which would have put a debut somewhere around the end of that year. By the time Avison Young's own announcement went out in August, after the deal was finalized, the target had shifted to spring 2026. Spring has now passed without a public opening date surfacing in local coverage. That's not unusual for a full renovation of a two-acre, two-building property with decades of deferred maintenance behind it, but it does mean the timeline residents were given a year ago no longer matches where things actually stand.
What's Already Settled
While that project works through its second missed deadline, Devon Yard keeps doing what it's done since 2018. The lifestyle center sits on the same stretch of Lancaster Avenue, close enough to the showgrounds that Fall Classic crowds have been walking over for years without needing directions. The current lineup:
- Anthropologie, including the brand's BHLDN bridal collection, spread across two selling floors
- Terrain Cafe, a greenhouse-style dining room built around seasonal brunch and dinner menus, known for blurring the line between indoor and outdoor seating
- Terrain Gardens, a full nursery and event space that hosts private gatherings for up to 140 guests among reclaimed barn wood floors and festival lighting
- Amis Trattoria, the property's Italian anchor, run under executive chef Kristina Wisneski, who came by way of Enoteca Tredici in Bryn Mawr, and known for dishes like bucatini with almond pesto and a meatball recipe that traces back to the original Amis under founding chef Marc Vetri
- Pizzeria Vetri, serving Neapolitan-style pizza as the third restaurant to join the complex
None of this is new information to anyone who's lived in Devon for more than a season, and that's the point. This is infrastructure at this stage, not novelty. It's the default answer to "where should we eat" during Fall Classic week precisely because it stopped being a question years ago.
What's Still Dark, and Why the Wait Keeps Extending
The contrast with the Salt II site is what makes this year's Fall Classic worth paying attention to. Devon Yard represents a corridor where the dining scene finished arriving and then just kept running. The former La Jonquille and Shiraz building represents the opposite: a project that's been publicly announced, has a named owner, has a stated concept, and still hasn't produced the one piece of information that would actually change a resident's plans, which is a date.
The gap between Kim's original eight-month estimate and the spring 2026 target that followed it is a useful data point on its own. It suggests the scope of the renovation grew, or at least proved harder to schedule, once the deal actually closed and the real work of gutting a building that's been closed for decades began in earnest. A 32,000 square foot complex with an elaborate mosaic interior isn't a quick build-out, and the spring window has now passed without an announcement, so anyone who assumed the restaurant would be open in time for this year's show should reset that expectation.
The Fall Classic Doesn't Wait for Construction Schedules
None of this affects the horse show itself. The Devon Fall Classic returns September 10 through 13, 2026, marking its 13th year as the all-jumper counterpart to the larger spring Devon Horse Show. This year's staging features the $25,000 Devon Fall Classic Open Speed Stake at the Dixon Oval, the same ring that's hosted the event's featured classes in past years.
In recent years the format has followed a familiar four-day arc: undercard classes early in the week, a speed stake later on, and a Saturday night grand prix as the marquee event, alongside midway rides, food vendors, and a stretch of boutique shopping tents for people who aren't there for the jumping at all. Ticket pricing in recent years has run from roughly $8 to $20 for single-day admission, with six-seat boxes for the full four days priced around $375, though anyone planning to attend should confirm current pricing directly through the Devon Horse Show's own site, since packages and availability shift year to year.
What matters for anyone living nearby is less the schedule and more the traffic pattern it creates. Thousands of visitors will move through the same half-mile of Lancaster Avenue that runs past both Devon Yard and the still-dark Salt II site, whether or not the second location has opened its doors by then. Devon Yard will absorb most of that overflow the way it has for years. The other building will keep sitting there, mid-renovation, another season closer to finished but not yet open.
What This Means for the Week
If you're planning around Fall Classic week this year, the practical read is simple. Devon Yard remains the reliable option, the same restaurants, the same hours, the same crowd it's drawn since 2018. The Salt II project is real, it's funded, and it has a concept worth waiting for, but the timeline has already slipped once and there's no public evidence yet that it's slipped back on track. Anyone hoping to eat Korean BBQ or the area's first Korean omakase menu before or after this year's show should plan for Devon Yard instead and treat an actual Salt II opening as a story for next year's Fall Classic, not this one.
That kind of gap, between a corridor's settled half and its unfinished half, is part of what makes Devon worth watching closely if you live here. Neighborhoods change in patches, not all at once, and the ones paying attention are usually the ones who notice first.
If you're weighing a move within Devon, or wondering what a property near this stretch of Lancaster Avenue is actually worth given how the corridor is shifting, the Houder Nuñez-Strid Team can walk you through it directly. Schedule a Confidential Market Consultation to talk through what's changing on your block and what it means for your plans.
