Drive past the southeast corner of Elm and Lincoln this month and you will see a construction fence, not a storefront. That corner has been the subject of failed proposals since before the 2008 recession, and the site that finally broke ground there, called One Winnetka, will not open its first retail doors until early 2027. If you judged the health of downtown by that one block, you would assume Winnetka is on pause.
You would be wrong, and the proof is a block away in every direction. While the crane at Elm and Lincoln keeps working toward a December 2026 completion, three separate businesses have already opened, expanded, or committed to the village without waiting to see how that project turns out. That is the part of the story worth paying attention to if you already live here: the investment isn't waiting on One Winnetka. It's happening in the same nine months the fence has been up.
What opened while the crane was still working
Start with Avli. The Greek restaurant has operated in Winnetka for more than sixteen years and has since expanded to three Chicago locations and one in Milwaukee, but this March it completed its largest transformation yet at the original address. Avli took over half of Winnetka's Laundry building, adding 2,400 square feet split between a new 1,600-square-foot lounge and 800 square feet of additional dining. Chef Jorge Angulo, a Culinary Institute of America graduate, rebuilt the menu around mezedes, the small shared plates that anchor Greek dining, while keeping most of the original dishes recognizable for longtime regulars.
A few blocks north in Hubbard Woods, a British chocolatier called Hotel Chocolat opened its fifth Chicagoland location this April at 912 Green Bay Road, taking over a storefront that had been Lana Jewelry since 2023. Lana relocated to Oak Brook. Hotel Chocolat, founded in 2004 and new to the US market only since 2025, chose the Hubbard Woods Design District over other North Shore options for its expansion.
And on Lincoln Avenue, close enough to One Winnetka that you can see the fence from the sidewalk, chef Michael Lachowicz opened Fondita Miguel in late 2024. Lachowicz already runs the George Trois Group's fine dining rooms nearby on Green Bay Road, Aboyer and Silencieux among them, but Fondita Miguel is a deliberately small counter-service taco and torta spot, a joint venture with his longtime team members Miguel Escobar and Sergio Angel, built to run on four staff and cater to the drop-in traffic from New Trier Township High School and the Winnetka Metra station next door.
None of these three businesses needed One Winnetka to open first. They read the same downtown everyone else did, construction fence included, and bet on it anyway.
The tenant roster is the tell
The strongest evidence for that read isn't even the businesses around the site. It's the tenant roster inside it. One Winnetka's retail space, more than 20,000 square feet in a four story Tudor style building from Murphy Development Group, has already landed two committed tenants well before opening: a Mediterranean restaurant concept from Ballyhoo Hospitality and a Charles Schwab branch, together taking roughly 12,500 square feet, with two more leases in the final stages for another 5,000 square feet.
Ballyhoo is not a first-time North Shore operator taking a flyer. The Chicago-based group already runs Pomeroy, its French restaurant that opened in Winnetka in 2021, along with Petit Pomeroy in River North and multiple Sophia Steak locations that started in neighboring Wilmette. The new restaurant, still unnamed, is planned as a roughly 6,700 square foot Mediterranean concept with live fire cooking, seating around 200 inside and 40 outside, larger than Pomeroy's current room. A group that already has a working restaurant a few blocks away chose to expand into the same downtown rather than look elsewhere.
That matters because this corner has burned through developers before. The original plan died with the 2008 recession. A second, more ambitious version collapsed when the village council rescinded approval in 2019. A third attempt in 2020 never got off the ground. The version now under construction, backed by a $66 million loan and built by general contractor Walsh Construction, is the first to survive long enough to have paying tenants signed before the walls are finished.
Where the fall calendar actually lives right now
None of that changes what a Saturday in Winnetka looks like between now and the end of the year. With downtown's center block fenced off, the village's fall programming runs almost entirely at the edges, in Hubbard Woods and around Indian Hill.
| Event | Where | When |
|---|---|---|
| First Friday in Hubbard Woods | Green Bay Road, Hubbard Woods Design District | September 11, 4 to 7 p.m. |
| Fall Native Plant Sale | Indian Hill Park, 131 Wilson Street | September 12, 9 to 11 a.m. |
| Winnetka-Northfield-Glencoe Chamber Farmers' Market | 754 Elm Street | Saturdays through October 31, 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. |
| First Friday Art Walk (season closer) | Green Bay Road, Hubbard Woods Design District | October 2 |
| Schmidt-Burnham Log House open house | 1140 Willow Road | Sundays through November 20, 2 to 4 p.m. |
The farmers market keeps its usual footprint on Elm Street, but the Hubbard Woods First Fridays have become the bigger draw this year, with participating merchants like Randoon's, Doyle Opticians, and Momsy's Cafe staying open late for shopping and live art demonstrations. The October 2 date closes the season as an Art Walk, the last of the monthly series before winter. If you have out-of-town guests through September, that is a straightforward answer to what to do with an evening.
The Schmidt-Burnham Log House, the oldest surviving log structure in Cook County, keeps its open Sunday hours through most of November, which is worth knowing if you have never actually been inside despite driving past it on Willow Road for years.
What changes once the fence comes down
The completion date to watch is December 2026 for the building itself, with Ballyhoo's restaurant and the other retail tenants expected to start opening in early 2027. That means this fall's calendar, spread out toward Hubbard Woods and Indian Hill, is likely the last full season before downtown's center of gravity shifts back toward Elm and Lincoln. Once One Winnetka's retail space fills in, the corner that has sat vacant for most of two decades becomes a 59-unit residential building with a large restaurant and a bank branch anchoring the ground floor, adding foot traffic to a stretch of Elm Street that has been a construction zone rather than a destination since the ground was broken.
If you are used to routing around that corner, next year is when that habit stops making sense.
The next few weekends, if you want a plan
For a September weekend, First Friday in Hubbard Woods on the 11th pairs naturally with the farmers market that same morning if you make a day of it. The Native Plant Sale at Indian Hill Park on the 12th is a one-morning event worth building a Saturday around if you garden. Fondita Miguel on Lincoln Avenue is close enough to the construction site that grabbing tacos there is a good way to see the progress in person. Avli's new lounge is a reasonable stop if you want to see what 2,400 additional square feet actually looks like in a space you already knew well.
None of this requires you to think about real estate. It just requires knowing which corner of the village is still fenced off and which ones have quietly gotten more interesting while it was.
If you ever do want to talk about what a building like One Winnetka means for values on your specific block, or you are simply curious how downtown's changes might affect your own plans down the road, the team at Payes Real Estate Group knows this village block by block, fence and all. You can find more on our Winnetka neighborhood page or reach out any time.
