Walk east on Elm Street toward Lincoln Avenue this week and you will pass a construction fence that has become part of the scenery. Behind it, the four-story frame of One Winnetka is close enough to finished that you can read the window lines and guess where the balconies will sit. It is easy to assume that means the ground-floor restaurant everyone has been asking about is close behind. It is not. The building's shell is on track to wrap up this December. The restaurant slated to anchor it will not seat a single table until sometime in 2027.
That gap between "the building is done" and "the restaurant is open" is the thing worth understanding if you actually live here and want to know where fall is happening downtown. It is not happening at Elm and Lincoln yet. It already happened, quietly, in two buildings the fence has nothing to do with.
The Six-Inch Detail That Tells You How Far Along This Really Is
Ballyhoo Hospitality, the group behind the French bistro Pomeroy on Spruce Street, is opening its second Winnetka restaurant inside One Winnetka. It is called Arkadia, a Mediterranean concept with live-fire cooking, and it will be the development's anchor tenant. In February of this year, Winnetka's Village Council spent part of a Tuesday meeting approving something almost comically small in scale given the size of the project: a six-inch encroachment into the public right-of-way, because Arkadia's floor plan changed and the entry door is now flush with the building facade instead of recessed. That is the level of detail a project is dealing with when it is still working through interior planning, not preparing for a soft launch.
Here is the timeline as it actually stands, pieced together from village records and reporting on the project:
| Milestone | Status as of fall 2026 |
|---|---|
| One Winnetka building shell | On track for completion, December 2026 |
| Ground-floor retail leasing | Reported sold out in late 2025 |
| Arkadia (Ballyhoo's second Winnetka restaurant) | Opening confirmed for 2027 |
| Pomeroy (Ballyhoo's first Winnetka restaurant, Spruce Street) | Already open, since 2021 |
The building will be finished before the year turns over. The restaurant most people are waiting for will not be. If you are planning a fall outing around "what's new downtown," the new construction is not the answer yet.
The Renovation That Actually Finished
Two doors down, inside the Laundry Building at 566 Chestnut Street, Avli just closed out a project of its own after considerably longer than a construction schedule. The Greek restaurant has occupied that building since 2009. This year it took on its biggest change yet: a 2,400-square-foot expansion, split between roughly 1,600 square feet of new lounge space and another 800 square feet of dining room, plus a new chef and a redesigned menu.
Chef Jorge Angulo, who led the overhaul, said the intent was "a way to catch up with the times." He also acknowledged the shift was not painless for longtime regulars, since a restaurant that had run the same way for sixteen years does not change its presentation without some friction. But the bones of what people came for are still there. Angulo put the figure at 60 to 80 percent of the menu remaining recognizable, even where the plating and format have moved on.
The practical upshot, if you have eaten at Avli before and struggled to find the door: there is a new entrance on the north side of the building facing Spruce Street. The old confusion about which glass door to walk through inside the Laundry Building is, for now, a little less of an issue. The lounge also runs a Friday night vinyl series, with Squeezebox Books spinning records behind the bar, which is a genuinely different way to spend a Friday than the restaurant offered a year ago.
This is the actual "new restaurant" story downtown this fall. It is not new construction. It is an old building finishing a renovation that took sixteen years to happen.
Two Doors Down, a Storefront Nobody Expected to Turn Over
The same pattern shows up in retail. In June, a new shop called The Lake Effect opened at 547 Chestnut Street, in the space that used to hold Chestnut Street Flowers. It is the next chapter for Allison Cassato, who built the flower shop's reputation and is now running a lifestyle store with her daughter, creative director Katie Cassato. The concept, which they describe as a curated "lake edit," covers apparel, accessories, and tabletop pieces built around life on the water, the kind of thing you'd want for a day at the beach or a weekend on a friend's boat.
It is a small piece of news by any objective measure. But it fits the larger point: the storefront turnover happening downtown this fall is in buildings that already existed, run by people who already had a foothold in the village. The new construction gets the attention and the construction fence. The actual change in what you can walk into and buy or eat is happening in spaces that never made the headlines the way One Winnetka did.
What Closes Out the Season
A few dates worth having on your calendar as summer tips into fall:
- The Winnetka-Northfield-Glencoe Chamber Farmers' Market runs Saturdays through October 31 this year, from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at 754 Elm Street. The market had its biggest single Saturday on record this year, with more than 2,800 people showing up on July 6, so the last several weekends of the season are worth treating as an event, not an errand.
- Fall Fest, put on by the Winnetka Park District, is Saturday, September 26, with food trucks, a DJ, and the usual kid-focused attractions. Adult admission is free.
- Hubbard Woods First Friday wraps its 2026 season on October 2 with an Art Walk, the last of the evening events the district has built into its signature draw over the past several seasons.
None of these depend on One Winnetka finishing. They are the parts of the fall calendar that were always going to happen on schedule, fence or no fence.
The Pattern, If You're Watching for It
The easy assumption, looking at a nearly-finished building at the center of downtown, is that its opening and the neighborhood's next chapter are the same event. They are not, at least not yet. The building will be done in December. Its restaurant will not open for another year after that. Meanwhile, the restaurant that did finish its renovation this year sits two doors away in a building that has been part of downtown since long before anyone drew up plans for Elm and Lincoln, and the storefront that changed hands this summer did it quietly, one address over from where flowers used to be.
If you already live here, this is useful in a small but real way: don't wait on the fence to tell you what's new. The neighborhood has been telling you all along, just not from the address you'd expect.
If you're the kind of person who likes tracking these small shifts because you're also thinking about what your own next move in Winnetka might look like, whether that's a home closer to the Metra or one you're finally ready to let go of, the team at Allie + Julie spends a lot of time paying attention to exactly this kind of detail. Request a free home valuation whenever you're ready to talk, no fence-watching required.
