If you haven’t driven down Fountain Hills Boulevard in the past week, you may have missed out on the fact that a new building is going up in the formerly vacant lot between the Safeway plaza and the plaza up the hill housing businesses like Senior Taco II and Papa Murphy’s. And assuming you’ve missed the buzz, the rumors are true, we’ve got a new Starbucks going in.

We still don’t have all of the finalized details for the new Starbucks but, considering how quickly things seem to be moving, it probably won’t be too long before residents can enjoy a drink on the patio or shoot through the drive-through lane to grab a beverage on their way to work in the mornings.

On the other side of town, construction is set to begin on a new McDonald’s sometime during the second quarter of 2018. McDonald’s isn’t moving an inch, however. Instead, the plan is to bring down the old building and then rebuild it in the same location. It sounds like the plan is to move pretty quickly once the ball gets rolling, so hopefully folks won’t be without their McNuggets for too long.

Combine that with the downtown development, upcoming hotel project at CopperWynd and residential development peppered around town, and it’s looking to be a pretty busy year for construction here in Fountain Hills.

We take all of that as a good sign. Hopefully this will provide some positive momentum heading into the new year.