"We want this to be a place where neighbors come and get to know one another," chef and co-owner Drake Mandrell told Block Club Chicago.
He wasn't describing a five-year plan or a chamber of commerce initiative. He was describing a choice he and his business partners made on their own, for a stretch of Central Avenue that nobody assigned them to.
That distinction matters right now, because if you've walked around Six Corners or Jefferson Park in the past six weeks, you've probably noticed a lot changing at once. Some of it is the payoff of a redevelopment plan that's been years in the making. Some of it is a handful of independent operators who picked these blocks for reasons that have nothing to do with anyone's master plan. Both are happening on the same six or seven blocks, in the same month, and they're worth telling apart, because they explain the neighborhood differently.
The Sears Lot Is Finally Doing What The Sign Promised
The most visible project is the one everyone's been watching since the last Sears store in Chicago shut its doors at Six Corners in 2018. The building sat there, then came down. Novak Construction, the developer behind the 6 Corners Lofts apartment conversion in the old Sears main building, is now building three standalone structures on the former Sears Auto Center site, addressed as 4035 N. Cicero Ave.
The tenants are set: Chicago's first Pita Inn location, a Burlington department store, and a Wells Fargo branch with a drive-up ATM. A construction permit for the Pita Inn space was issued back in November 2025, and the family-owned Middle Eastern chain, which built its name in the suburbs with locations in Skokie, Wheeling, Glenview, Mundelein, and Naperville, says the Six Corners restaurant will seat more than 130 people and include an outdoor terrace and a specialty coffee bar. As of this month, the whole three-building project is still under construction, with the Six Corners Chamber pointing to a late 2026 completion.
This is the plan working the way it was supposed to. The chamber announced the project back in early 2025, permits followed, ground broke, and now the buildings are physically rising where a shuttered auto shop sat for years. It's a good story, and it's an entirely separate story from what's happening a few blocks away.
A Block Away, Nobody Waited On A Plan
While the Sears lot fills in on its developer's timeline, the smaller storefronts around it have been filling in on their own schedule, driven by individual operators rather than a single redevelopment agreement.
Fork and Coin, at 3938 N. Central Ave., is the clearest example. Mandrell describes it as an "American Izakaya," built around Japanese tavern culture, and the restaurant already runs a monthly supper club with rotating guest chefs. The next one, on September 26, features dishes from Chef Gram Gould inspired by Spanish and Asian cuisine, with a mezcal tasting built in. None of that required a redevelopment agreement. It required an operator deciding this stretch of Central Avenue was worth the bet.
A few blocks over, on the other side of Cicero Avenue from the Sears project, Chicago's first Original Steaks and Hoagies location opened at 3930 N. Cicero Ave. at the end of August. Notably, it's not a standard location for the Ohio-founded chain. It's the first Original Steaks and Hoagies Tavern, meaning it serves beer and wine alongside the usual cheesesteaks, hoagies, and Philly fries. With 22 locations nationally and only four in Illinois, the company picked Six Corners for a format it hasn't tried anywhere else.
Jefferson Park picked up an opening of its own around the same time, with Deluxe Global Market setting up shop in the neighborhood. None of these three businesses are connected to each other, and none of them are connected to the Sears redevelopment happening blocks away. The three openings fell within the same six-week window.
Two Old CVS Boxes, Two Different Answers
Jefferson Park has its own version of the same pattern, and it's easiest to see in what's happening to two former CVS Pharmacy buildings that sat empty or underused for years.
- At 6200 W. Higgins Ave., developers were set to close in mid-August on the purchase of the former CVS site, with plans to retrofit the building into a Sprouts Farmers Market, according to Alderman James Gardiner. The permit application calls for a new front vestibule and a tower feature, and a construction permit was pending as of mid-August.
- At the southeast corner of Milwaukee and Lawrence avenues, another long-closed CVS location (the pharmacy shut down back in 2020) is now the site of a different kind of interest. Building permits are pending for interior demolition and new signage reading "Willowbrae," a name connected to a chain of childcare learning academies, suggesting the corner may become a daycare.
Two former pharmacy boxes, both stuck empty for years, both suddenly moving in the same season, toward completely different second lives. Neither outcome required the other. That's the same pattern showing up again: this stretch of the Northwest Side isn't waiting for a single coordinated push. It's filling in wherever an operator sees an opening.
The corner of Milwaukee and Lawrence has a fourth occupant worth naming too. Once the Willowbrae project is finished, all four corners of that intersection will be occupied for the first time in years, joining Hoyne Bank, Mr. B's Caribbean Grill, and Sunnyside Plants and Gifts, which have anchored that corner while the fourth sat empty.
Even the smaller, odder announcements fit the pattern. A planned Happy Cat Hotel & Spa, a boarding and grooming spot for cats, is in the works for a vacant one-story office building at 5510 W. Montrose Ave. in the Jefferson Park-Portage Park area. It's a niche concept tailored to a particular property, which is exactly the kind of bet that's been landing all over this stretch of the Northwest Side lately.
The Neighborhood's Biggest Weekend Runs On Its Own Clock Entirely
If the storefronts are filling in on staggered, uncoordinated timelines, one thing in Jefferson Park never wavers. The Taste of Polonia Festival wrapped its 2026 run at the Copernicus Center on Lawrence Avenue over Labor Day weekend, September 4 through 7. It's billed as the largest Polish festival in the country, an annual tradition that goes back to 1980. The lineup this year was billed at more than 60 bands and artists across multiple stages, alongside the usual pierogi, kielbasa, and golabki, with proceeds going to the nonprofit Copernicus Foundation that stewards the historic building.
The festival doesn't need a redevelopment plan or an independent operator's bet. It just needs the calendar to turn to Labor Day weekend, and it happens, the same way it has for over four decades, regardless of what's under construction two blocks away on Cicero Avenue.
What This Adds Up To If You Live Here
None of this is really one story. It's at least three: a developer finishing a project years in the making, a scattering of independent operators opening businesses on their own timelines, and a cultural institution that answers to nobody's timeline but the calendar. What ties them together is that they're all happening in the same handful of blocks, right now, for reasons that have nothing to do with each other.
If you live in Portage Park, Six Corners, or Jefferson Park, that's probably the most useful way to read this stretch of late summer. The neighborhood isn't being rebuilt by one plan. It's being filled in from several directions at once, by people who each had their own reason to bet on these blocks. Some of those bets took years of permitting to reach the sidewalk. Others opened their doors in six weeks flat. Both kinds are worth walking past.
If you're the kind of person who likes watching a neighborhood change in real time, this is a good season for it. And if a stretch like this one, with its mix of legacy institutions, patient redevelopment, and fast-moving independent openings, ever has you thinking about what it would take to actually put down roots here, the team at Telequest Realty knows these blocks well enough to walk you through it.
