York Road's North End Gets New Neighbors and Night Crews Before the Holidays
November 12, 2026
November 12, 2026
Tom Carolan works full time and has two young children, so he rarely has time for 18 holes. He put a golf simulator in his garage, and it worked well enough that he turned it into a business. Elite Golf Studios has four private, soundproof bays with Trackman IO technology, and it sits on Wight Avenue just off York Road in Cockeysville. In the St. John Properties announcement, Carolan said he chose the site partly because "we envision executives visiting Elite Golf Studios during lunch, or before and after the workday."
That plan to serve people around the workday explains a lot about this stretch of road this winter. The part of York Road between Wight Avenue and Shawan Road is being rebuilt in two ways. On the surface, new storefronts are aimed at the daytime crowd of office workers and commuters. Underneath, Baltimore County is replacing a 24-inch water main, with most of the work done overnight after that traffic has gone home. At the north end, Hunt Valley Towne Centre holds its holiday events on Friday nights, which the county's posted work schedule doesn't cover.
St. John Properties bought the 17-acre site at York Road and Wight Avenue in 2023 and named it Hunt Valley Exchange. It covers 110,000 square feet in two flex/R&D buildings at 25 and 35 Wight Avenue, plus an 8,165-square-foot retail building at 11060 York Road. On October 20, 2026, the company announced its first five leases, totaling more than 26,000 square feet. With those, the project is 67% leased.
| Business | Address | What it is | Expected opening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dunkin' | 11060 York Road | Drive-through location, moving from a nearby York Road site | By year-end 2026 |
| Spicy Olive Indian Restaurant | 11060 York Road | Fast-casual Indian with lunch and dinner buffet | By year-end 2026 |
| GPT Wine & Spirits | 11060 York Road | Alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink specialties | By year-end 2026 |
| Elite Golf Studios | 25 Wight Avenue, Suite M | Four simulator bays, 24-hour member access | December 2026, per its website |
| The Goddard School | 25 Wight Avenue | Early childhood center relocating from Sparks | Q2 2027 |
On November 2, Baltimore Fishbowl also reported the four retail tenants as expected by the end of the year. According to Elite Golf Studios' website, it opens in December 2026. By the studio's own estimate, one golfer can play a round in about 45 minutes, and a foursome takes about two hours.
The developer's figures show who this corner is built for. St. John Properties counts nearly 3,000 businesses and about 55,000 employees within three miles of the site, and about 33,000 vehicles pass its York Road frontage each day. The tenant mix fits those numbers: coffee from a drive-through, a lunch buffet, a 45-minute round of golf, and a school designed, in its franchise owner's words, for "early morning drop-offs and late afternoon pick-ups."
Two of the five leases come from operators who already do business on this corridor, so the new building partly extends places nearby residents already know.
Sukhwinder Sidhu owns and runs 13 Dunkin' locations in Baltimore County. He is moving his current York Road store to 11060 York Road, which the announcement puts less than half a mile from the old site. His reason was the drive-through. "Locations with drive-through capabilities are typically our highest performers," he said in the St. John Properties release.
Girish Garg has run Café Spice at 10540 York Road since 2011, in St. John Properties' Yorkridge Center North. At Hunt Valley Exchange he is opening two separate businesses at the same address, Spicy Olive and GPT Wine & Spirits. In the same release, Garg describes it as "the only Maryland restaurant offering an Indian buffet for both lunch and dinner," with naan pizzas and Indian street food also on the menu. He added that the buffet "is extremely popular at my other restaurant."
The road in front of these storefronts is also under construction. Baltimore County's current engineering projects list includes the York Road 24-inch Water Main Replacement, Phase Five. The project replaces about 4,200 linear feet of main along York Road from Wight Avenue to Shawan Road. It also continues along Shawan Road from York Road to about 460 feet west of Hyland Avenue.
Here are the project details as the county lists them:
The work zone starts at the same intersection as Hunt Valley Exchange and ends at the road leading into Hunt Valley Towne Centre. At 40% done with a summer 2027 end date, the work will continue through the holidays and into the first months the new tenants are open. Drivers on York Road late on a weeknight should expect flaggers. Daytime trips to the new storefronts fall outside the main work window. Friday and Saturday nights are not on the county's posted schedule at all.
That schedule matters at the north end of the work zone. Hunt Valley Towne Centre, at 118 Shawan Road, has put its holiday programming on Fridays.
The last session of the center's Holiday Night Market is Friday, November 20, from 4 to 8 p.m. It's an outdoor market with local makers, food and drinks, and holiday music. The earlier sessions were on November 6 and 13, so the 20th is the only one left. One week later, on Friday, November 27, the center holds its Tree Lighting. The listing says more details are coming.
These events take place in a center that has recently redone its gathering spaces. In July 2025, Baltimore Fishbowl reported that developer Greenberg Gibbons planned a $10 million project: a redesigned plaza with a turf lawn, seating, a 14-foot entertainment screen and space for seasonal events, along with upgrades to the Regal theater. In April 2026, the Baltimore Business Journal reported that the upgrade was finished. The owners told the paper the property's value has reached $500 million, up from the $25 million they paid for it as a "dead mall" in 2002.
The center is still adding to it. Its Progress at The Valley page lists more features on the way, including social seating, shade sails, murals, a container for pop-up shops, a small pavilion and stage, outdoor movie nights, and a refreshed Upper Main Street. The page also promises "special moments designed in memory of Chuck Thompson." The center already has one. According to a 2025 Baltimore Fishbowl feature, the longtime Orioles broadcaster's ashes rest inside a fieldstone fireplace at the center, with a memorial plaque above it.
Taken together, the two ends of this stretch run on one schedule from now into next summer:
Hunt Valley Exchange still has about 30,000 square feet of flex/R&D space to lease, and St. John Properties is still marketing two retail pad sites along York Road. So the corner at Wight Avenue may add more names after these five.
When a stretch of York Road changes this quickly, it helps to know what's opening and what's still under construction. Christina Giffin follows these changes block by block across northern Baltimore County. If you'd like to talk about what the Wight-to-Shawan stretch might mean for your corner of Cockeysville, Let's Connect.
Christina take great pride in the relationships. She builds and always works relentlessly on the client's behalf to help them achieve their real estate goals.