Two questions came in this week from the same stretch of East Market Street. What’s going in next to TJ Maxx? And what is this “Explorium” thing people are getting emails about? Neither has been announced anywhere, so I went to the records, and then I drove over. Both are further along than a “coming soon” page suggests.
Next to TJ Maxx: Sierra
TJ Maxx sits in Spotswood Valley Square, the Kroger-anchored center at 1790 E Market St. The bay directly beside it, about 13,800 square feet, was Party City until that chain liquidated early last year. It has been dark since.
The landlord’s own leasing site plan, dated September 1, 2026, now labels that bay Sierra.
Detail from the September 1, 2026 leasing plan published by Silver Bears Real Estate, the center’s management company.
And it’s not just on paper. The bay’s old storefront is gone, a new block wall is going up, and there were crews on lifts inside when I stopped by this week.
The bay beside TJ Maxx, mid-September 2026. The ghost of the old Party City lettering is still visible above the opening.
If you don’t know Sierra, it’s the outdoor and active-wear arm of TJX, the same company that owns TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods. Think discounted hiking boots, fleece, camping gear, and running shoes, run on the same treasure-hunt model as the store next door. TJX has been opening Sierra stores steadily across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic over the last two years, and putting one beside an existing TJ Maxx is a pattern they use a lot.
What I can’t tell you: an opening date. There is no announcement from TJX and no news coverage yet. A landlord doesn’t put a national retailer’s name on a leasing plan without a signed deal, and the construction says the deal is real. My guess from the state of the space is spring, but that is a guess.
One more detail from the same plan: the center has only two small suites left marked available, about 1,300 and 1,600 square feet. For a 190,000-square-foot center, that’s close to full, which says something about how East Market retail is doing.
The Explorium
The other one is two doors down, and it’s not hiding. The sign is already up.
The Explorium is going into the white retail box at 1740 E Market St, the building attached to the Firestone store, on the same side of the road as Spotswood Valley Square and a short walk from the TJ Maxx entrance. Until this year that building was on the market as a roughly 22,000-square-foot retail space with 18-foot ceilings and a loading dock.
The website, playtheexplorium.com, describes “Harrisonburg’s next great adventure,” a family entertainment destination “planned for late 2026” with “playful, challenging, and group-friendly adventure experiences under one roof.” Birthdays, team outings, a night out. It asks you to join a mailing list for a “first look,” and it doesn’t say what the experiences are.
What the records add:
- The Explorium LLC was formed in Virginia on February 4, 2026, and is active. Its registered agent is a Staunton business attorney and its principal office is in Staunton, so this is a local group, not a national chain.
- The building sold on April 15, 2026, for $3,400,000 to Trinity Investments Properties LLC, a Zion Crossroads entity, per the city’s ownership records. Two months after the LLC formed, someone bought the building. The parcel is 2.18 acres, zoned B-2, and the city assesses the whole property, Firestone included, at about $3.6 million.
- The website domain was registered July 3, and the sign went up sometime after that.
So the sequence is: company in February, building in April, website in July, sign by September, “late 2026” opening. That’s a real timeline, not a rumor.
For the record, this is not the Explore More Discovery Museum downtown, and it’s not Horizons Edge on Cornerstone Lane. It’s a third thing, and the only one of the three you can drive past today without knowing what it is.
Why these two belong together
Both are on the quieter side of what “growth” looks like. Neither needed a rezoning or a public hearing, so neither showed up on an agenda, and both are within a few hundred feet of each other on the busiest retail strip in the city. One is a national brand filling a dark box in an existing center. The other is a local startup that bought its own building. If you own a home east of Interstate 81, this is the kind of change that shows up in your daily errands before it shows up in a headline.
Sources
Silver Bears Real Estate leasing site plan for Spotswood Valley Square dated September 1, 2026. City of Harrisonburg Real Estate and Ownership GIS and the city assessor’s parcel records for 1790 and 1740 E Market St (tax map 073 D 1 and 078 A 2), including the April 2026 deed. Photos are mine, taken the week of September 14, 2026. Virginia State Corporation Commission business entity record for The Explorium LLC (entity 11964875). playtheexplorium.com as published September 17, 2026, and its domain registration record. No company representative was contacted for this post. I’ll update it as either project goes public.
Seeing something change on a block you care about? Send me the cross streets and I’ll look it up in the records.