Walk past the southeast corner of Elm Street and Lincoln Avenue this September and you will find exactly what you found in June: a construction fence, a Walsh Construction sign, and a four-story steel frame where six vacant storefronts used to sit. One Winnetka has been the geographic center of the village's downtown for more than a decade of stalled plans, foreclosure, and a $1.25 million pharmacy buyout just to finish assembling the site. It is finally under construction. It is not close to open.
That gap between "under construction" and "open" matters less than it sounds like it should, because almost nothing about Winnetka's actual fall calendar was ever waiting on that corner. A few blocks away on Chestnut Street, one of the village's longest-running restaurants just finished the biggest expansion of its life. A few blocks the other way on Lincoln Avenue, a two-year-old taco counter is doing steady business within sight of the same fence. And a mile north, an entirely separate business district is closing out its own season on a calendar that never had anything to do with Elm and Lincoln in the first place. If you live here and you've been holding off on a night out downtown because you assumed the center of town was paused, that assumption doesn't hold up.
The corner that isn't open yet
One Winnetka's numbers, as of the most recent reporting, are settled: a four-story, mixed-use building with roughly 20,955 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and 59 residential units above it, built by Murphy Development Group in partnership with Harrison Street's Christopher Merrill on a $66 million construction loan against an $89 million total project cost. Demolition wrapped in late 2025, and the target completion date is December 2026, with commercial tenants beginning to open in early 2027, according to Crain's Chicago Business and The Record North Shore's reporting on the leasing roster.
Six tenants are already signed. Ballyhoo Hospitality, the group behind Wilmette's Sophia Steak and Winnetka's own Pomeroy, will anchor the block with a roughly 6,700-square-foot Mediterranean concept built around live-fire cooking, seating 200 inside and 40 more outside. It will share the first floor with Fare, a natural-food fast-casual chain expanding from Chicago, plus Solidcore, Winnetka Aesthetic Studio, Duet Preservation Audiology, and Charles Schwab, which took the second-largest lease in the building.
None of that helps you tonight. The project has already slipped once, from an early hope of breaking ground in 2025 after a "third time's the charm" approval vote in early 2024, when Village President Chris Rintz told the developers, "go build something, OK?" after nearly a decade of false starts on that site. Construction is real this time. But a December 2026 completion date with early-2027 tenant buildout means the earliest a Winnetka resident should expect to sit down at that Mediterranean concept is more than a year from now, not this fall.
What's actually open, a few blocks from the fence
Avli, the Greek restaurant that has anchored the Laundry building at 566 Chestnut Street since 2009, spent the first half of 2026 finishing the largest expansion of its more-than-sixteen-year run in Winnetka, and it's now settled into its first full autumn in the new space. Chestnut Street sits close enough to the One Winnetka site that Avli is arguably the closest thing downtown has to a bellwether for how the corner's construction is affecting foot traffic nearby, and the answer so far is that it isn't. The restaurant took over half of the Laundry building, adding 2,400 square feet split between a 1,600-square-foot bar and lounge and an 800-square-foot front dining room, and opened a new entrance on the north side of the building along Spruce Street, according to The Record North Shore.
Owner Louie Alexakis brought in chef Jorge Angulo, a Culinary Institute of America graduate, to rebuild the menu around mezedes, Greek shared plates built for a table rather than a single diner. Angulo has been candid about the tension in that kind of overhaul. "A good 60% to 80% is recognizable, but there have been a lot of drastic changes through presentation and how we go about things," he told The Record North Shore in March. The physical space leans into the same instinct toward reinvention: designers Gold Coast Interiors and X Design Collective built the new lounge around rift-cut white oak, linen, and rust and clay tones, and the room now includes a working vinyl station. Every Friday night, Squeezebox Books spins a curated rotation there, jazz and bossa nova and soul, alongside late-night small plates.
A few blocks the other direction, on the same Lincoln Avenue that gives One Winnetka half its address, Fondita Miguel has quietly become a known quantity rather than a new opening. The counter-service Mexican spot from chef Michael Lachowicz's George Trois Group opened around Thanksgiving 2024 at 544 Lincoln Avenue, a short walk from New Trier Township High School and the Winnetka Metra station, and it has now had close to two years to build a following on the same street where the construction fence sits. It is not evidence that the fence has hurt anything nearby. It is evidence that downtown Winnetka never actually stopped for it.
Two First Fridays left, plus a Wednesday nobody expects
None of that is where Hubbard Woods comes in, and that's the point. The Hubbard Woods Design District, which runs along Green Bay Road between Tower Road and Scott Avenue, sits far enough from Elm and Lincoln that its calendar was never going to be affected by that corner either way. The district has been running First Fridays all year, a monthly evening of after-hours shopping, live music, and rotating art installations. The 2026 season has two dates left. This Friday, September 11, brings another First Friday. October 2 closes the season out as an Art Walk, the district's own description of its final evening of the year.
If you already have those two Fridays on your radar, there is a third date worth knowing about that isn't on most calendars anymore. The Winnetka Park District's Wednesdays in the Woods concert series officially ran Wednesdays from June through August at Hubbard Woods Park, free and open to anyone with a blanket. The season already looks finished for the year. It isn't. One show, originally scheduled for June 24, got rained out and rescheduled to this Wednesday, September 9, when 7th Heaven takes the stage at 6:30pm, a half hour earlier than the summer slot. It's the kind of date that only shows up if you're still checking the Park District's own calendar in September, which most residents have stopped doing by now.
What this means if you live here
| Downtown core (Elm & Lincoln) | Hubbard Woods (Green Bay Rd, north end) | |
|---|---|---|
| Current status | One Winnetka under construction, fenced | Unaffected by construction, fully open |
| What's there right now | Avli's new lounge (Chestnut St), Fondita Miguel (Lincoln Ave) | First Friday events, Hubbard Woods Park concerts |
| Next milestone | December 2026 completion | Oct 2 Art Walk (season finale) |
| When new tenants open | Early 2027 | Already open |
The practical read for anyone already living in Winnetka is straightforward. The fence at Elm and Lincoln is a real, years-long construction project with a real timeline: December 2026 for the building, early 2027 before its six tenants finish their own buildouts. But it was never a reason to skip a night out downtown, and the businesses operating within a few blocks of it, Avli on Chestnut and Fondita Miguel on Lincoln itself, are the evidence. Hubbard Woods, a mile north, was never on the same clock to begin with. Between the two, this fall has more going on within walking distance than the fence out front suggests.
That kind of texture, which blocks kept their footing during a years-long construction project and which didn't, tends to matter again later when those same blocks get marketed for sale. For now, it's simply where the village is actually spending its evenings.
If you're weighing a move within Winnetka, or want a read on how a project like One Winnetka could affect a specific block once it opens, Heidi Picard Properties can walk you through what it means for a particular street or property. Get a Free Home Valuation & Consultation to start that conversation.
