Walk the Trail Through Time boardwalk at Techny Prairie Park this month and you'll pass a hand-lettered sign near the detention basin fence, the kind the Park District posts before a grant-funded project actually breaks ground. A few minutes' drive south, Northbrook Court sits behind its own quieter kind of signage: gates down over storefronts that used to have names on them. Two landmarks that anchor daily life in West Northbrook are both entering active construction phases inside the same calendar year, and the order each one is following says more about what to expect than either project's press release does.
What's Actually Left Inside Northbrook Court
Neiman Marcus is still there. It's the one department store that never left, the last name standing from a 1976 opening lineup that also included Lord & Taylor and Sears. Everything else has turned over at least once, and most of it has simply closed. As of early this year, the mall's interior held roughly two dozen tenants, a number that includes Chanel, Tiffany & Co., Tommy Bahama, White House Black Market and Chico's, plus a handful of restaurants still doing lunch and dinner business: California Pizza Kitchen, Di Pescara and the outparcel P.F. Chang's. Two Hi-Five Sports Zone locations still run youth sports classes inside, and the 14-screen AMC Dine-In theater keeps its doors open on the south side. The Lego Store, one of the more recent tenants, left for Old Orchard in December 2025.
The mall's changes have been building for years. Village hearings back in 2023 put numbers on them before most of these storefronts had gone dark: sales tax contributions to Northbrook from the mall had fallen more than 20 percent between 2012 and 2021, alongside a vacancy rate near 20 percent. Even at that reduced rate, the property was still generating around $5 million a year in property taxes for the village, which is part of why redevelopment has stayed a Village Board priority rather than something anyone walked away from.
The Order Nobody Predicted
The plan that came out of those 2023 hearings had a shape most people would guess: new outdoor retail and restaurants first, on the northeast corner of the property below Lake Cook Road, with residential filling in on the west side afterward. Officials seemed genuinely optimistic about the pace.
"I'm giddy-up, let's go."
That's Plan Commissioner Keri Halperin, closing out the August 2023 joint meeting that cleared the way for final approval. The Village Board signed off on a full redevelopment and economic incentive agreement that October.
What actually happened is the opposite order. In March 2025, the Village Board approved Brookfield Properties' request to build the residential piece first and push the retail overhaul to a later phase. Village President Kathryn Ciesla described the change as giving the developer room to respond to current market conditions and build toward the larger project. Architectural renderings from the project's design firm show 315 multifamily units wrapped around a new green lawn, sitting above a 434-car parking deck. Summer 2026 was the earliest the village said site work on that housing could start.
This is the detail worth sitting with if you live nearby: nothing about the retail side of Northbrook Court is getting built next. The apartments are. That means the visible sign of progress most people are watching for, new shops and restaurants opening where the empty storefronts are now, isn't the next thing coming. Construction fencing and excavation for housing is.
It's also worth remembering how often this project's own timeline has already moved. A public-private partnership covering about 18 acres of the site dates back to 2019, and it never got off the ground because of the pandemic. The 2023 plan projected retail construction starting in 2024 with openings in 2025. None of that happened on schedule either. Here's how the dates have actually landed against the plan:
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 2019 | Village and Brookfield sign an 18-acre partnership; stalls during COVID-19 |
| April 2023 | Brookfield presents a conceptual master plan for the full property |
| October 2023 | Village Board approves the redevelopment and economic incentive agreement |
| March 2025 | Village approves housing-first sequencing, ahead of retail |
| Summer 2026 | Earliest possible groundbreaking for the residential phase |
A project that has slipped its own dates at nearly every stage since 2019 is not one where "earliest possible" should be read as a confirmed date. If you haven't seen fencing go up along Lake Cook Road yet, that fits the pattern more than it breaks it.
A Different Kind of Construction, Same Season
A few blocks north, Techny Prairie Park and Fields is working on its own timeline, and it's a much smaller, much more local kind of project. In 2024, the Northbrook Park District applied for an Open Space Lands Acquisition and Development grant from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to renovate the pathways that circle the park's detention basin. Construction on that work is slated to begin this year.
The park itself is one of the more complete recreational stretches in the village, built on the former Anetsberger Manufacturing site the Park District bought in 2010:
- A nine-hole golf course and ponds
- Four baseball diamonds and batting cages
- A 22,000-square-foot skate park
- Lighted turf fields, a playground and a lighted sled hill
- The Trail Through Time boardwalk, a natural history walk built through restored marshland
More than two miles of connected trails run through the park, including a 5k course that ties into Meadowhill Park and eventually reaches Meadowbrook Elementary, Northbrook Junior High, Village Green and downtown Northbrook. That same 5k loop hosts the Liberty Loop 5K Run and Liberty Lap Fun Run every Fourth of July. Near the Activity Center parking lot, there's a bike repair station sponsored by George Garner Cyclery, stocked with a tire pump, hex keys and wrenches for anyone who needs a quick fix mid-ride.
None of that changes because of one basin-path renovation. But anyone who uses the loop around the detention basin as part of a regular walk or run should expect detour signage this year while the OSLAD-funded work is underway, the same way anyone driving past Northbrook Court should expect fencing before storefronts.
Where the Neighborhood's Actual Weekend Energy Sits
Last weekend, downtown Northbrook hosted its sixth annual Brewfest at Village Green Park, 1810 Walters Ave. The September 19 event ran a full craft beer and cider lineup, Topo Chico, Right Bee Cider, RationALE, Revolution Brewing, Dogfish Head, Sketchbook Brewing, Cayman Jack, White Claw, New Holland, Lakefront Brewery, Yuengling, Warsteiner and Two Brothers Brewing Company, with the Velvet Rose Band playing 70s R&B, Motown and funk covers, and food available on-site from Landmark Inn Bar & Grille. At intermission, around 5:45 p.m., the event paused for a toast marking the Village of Northbrook's 125th anniversary.
The Brewfest was pitched as a way to celebrate the start of the fall season, and Village Green Park gave it a central setting a short walk from the Metra-adjacent downtown blocks.
The next twelve months in West Northbrook will look like two separate construction sites running on two very different clocks: a multi-decade retail property finally starting its long-delayed rebuild in the order nobody originally planned, and a neighborhood park quietly redoing the path locals already walk every day. Watch for fencing on Lake Cook Road. Watch for detour signs near the Techny basin. Neither one is likely to finish on the date first announced.
If the pace or shape of change around the Northbrook Court corridor affects how you're thinking about a home nearby, from what construction traffic might mean for a daily commute to how the eventual retail phase could shift property values on adjacent streets, Lyn Wise Group can walk through the specifics with you.
