Buffalo Grove Filled In Every Storefront on Lake-Cook Road Except the One It Needed First

Drive the stretch of McHenry Road where it meets Lake-Cook and you can watch a redevelopment fill in almost in real time. A year ago it was mostly fencing and dirt. Now there's a Dutch Bros with a line out the door most mornings, a rebranded bowling alley getting new paint, and a seven-story apartment building that's more than 90 percent leased. What's still missing is the one tenant the whole project was actually built around.

That gap says more about how Buffalo Grove works right now than any single opening does. Small tenants move fast here. Coffee counters, fast-casual chains, even a cafe under construction can go from permit to open sign in months. Grocery anchors move on a completely different clock, and this year the village is waiting on not one but three of them at once, in three different corners of town.

What Actually Opened This Year

If you've been keeping half an eye on the corridor, here's what you've probably already noticed:

• Dutch Bros Coffee opened in early August at the former Burger King site near McHenry and Lake Cook. It's among the chain's first Chicago-area locations and one of the few Dutch Bros stores anywhere with indoor seating.
• Bowlero Buffalo Grove is mid-rebrand into Lucky Strike, part of the parent company's national shift away from the Bowlero name. The building is getting new exterior paint and signage as part of the transition.
• Naani's Cafe is under construction in the north building next to Sushi Grove, with an opening the village has described only as "later this year."
• The 250, the seven-story apartment building anchoring the development, has crossed 90 percent leased, which the developer, Urban Street, has called one of its fastest-leasing properties.

That's four separate signs of momentum, none of which required a grocery store to happen first. A pretzel counter, a coffee drive-through, a bowling alley rename and a lease-up don't need an anchor tenant. The building permits that actually determine when this project reaches "done" do.

The One Requirement That Slowed Everything Down

Here's the part that doesn't show up if you're just watching storefronts change. The Clove's redevelopment agreement with the village requires a grocery anchor. Not a preference, a requirement. When Amazon Fresh, the tenant originally slated for the 43,000-square-foot anchor space, began pulling back nationally and eventually halted its Buffalo Grove build-out, the entire project's completion timeline got stuck behind a single open question: who fills that space now.

Village President Eric Smith put it plainly at a President's Pick event in February:

"It has to be a grocer, by the redevelopment agreement, and it's going to be a grocer. So it's going to happen. We're going to have a grocer in there."

That's not marketing language. That's a village official confirming the contract terms out loud, in public, because residents kept asking why a $150 million project that broke ground in 2022 still didn't have its main tenant four years later.

The answer arrived in March: Whole Foods signed the lease. Trustees later approved a modified footprint, 35,000 square feet for retail and 8,000 for fulfillment or storage, and the village extended Kensington Development Partners' deadline to reach substantial completion from June 2026 to June 2027. Translation for anyone timing a move around this corridor: don't expect groceries at The Clove before early 2027, and treat even that date as the current best estimate rather than a lock.

Buffalo Grove Actually Has Three Grocery Vacancies Right Now

The Clove isn't the only corner of town waiting on a grocer. Smith's February remarks named two others in the same breath. Chase Plaza, at the entrance to the village on Lake-Cook and Arlington Heights roads, sat with a vacant former Dominick's for more than a decade. That's now moving toward Sprouts Farmers Market, a national chain with more than 480 stores across 25 states, taking roughly 27,000 square feet alongside a Club Studio fitness tenant. The developer had closed on the building and pulled an active demolition permit as of this spring, but unlike Whole Foods, Sprouts doesn't have a confirmed opening date yet.

Separately, the Mariano's at Woodland Commons closed in 2025, leaving a third vacancy the village is still working to fill with no tenant named as of this writing.

Line those up and the picture is less "one stalled project" and more "the whole village restocking its grocery anchors at the same time." Here's how the two confirmed projects compare:

Once both land, Lake-Cook Road ends up bookended by grocers on nearly opposite ends of the same corridor, which is a different outcome than what either individual news item suggested on its own.

The Park Is Still Just a Rendering

One more piece worth setting expectations on: the one-acre public park planned as part of The Clove. The village hired a Philadelphia design firm, WRT Planning and Design, in 2025 and gathered public input on the design that summer. As of now it's still in the planning phase, with the village's own timeline pointing to a 2027 groundbreaking. If you've been wondering when the green space shows up, that's the honest answer: after the grocery store, not before.

This Weekend Was the Hinge

None of this construction paused the calendar. Buffalo Grove Days ran Labor Day weekend, September 3 through 7, at Mike Rylko Community Park, and the parade on Saturday drew the usual mix of marching bands, floats and neighborhood pride. This year's Grand Marshal was Howard Green, the retired founding conductor of the Buffalo Grove Symphonic Band. Along the route, the Stevenson High School Marching Patriots performed, Tony Abaso of West Chicago pulled BMX stunts for Team Retro BMX, and members of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh USA played drums as they marched. A five-year-old named Gianna Weigand covered her ears as a fire truck rolled past, which is as good a summary of a small-town parade as any camera could catch.

One quieter effect of festival week: the Sunday Farmers Market at Mike Rylko didn't run its usual slot on September 6 because the park was in use for Buffalo Grove Days. If you went looking for produce that Sunday and found nothing, that's why. The market picks back up September 13 and continues through October 11, its final Sunday of the 2026 season.

What This Actually Means If You Live Here

The corridor isn't stalled and it isn't finished. It's layering in the order these projects always layer in: fast tenants first, anchors last. If you're planning errands around what's already open, Dutch Bros, the Jamba and Cinnabon combo store, Sushi Grove and eventually Naani's Cafe are usable now or within months. If you're planning around groceries or green space at The Clove specifically, the honest timeline points to 2027, and even that comes with a village-approved buffer.

Buffalo Grove has done this kind of layered build-out before, and the pattern holds: the businesses that don't need permits for 43,000-square-foot anchor spaces show up first, and the ones that do take years longer than anyone standing at the construction fence in year one expected.

If you're weighing what a specific block or corridor here means for your own plans, whether that's a home near the Lake-Cook corridor or somewhere quieter in Buffalo Grove, Valorie Schmidt tracks these local shifts as part of daily work in this market. Reach out for a conversation about what's actually changing in the neighborhoods you're watching, not just what's in the press release.