"I know for the residents, it seems like forever," Village President Franco Coladipietro told the Daily Herald in September, when Bloomingdale named the first five restaurants for the former Stratford Square Mall site.
The renderings on the fence banners show a lake with water features, waterside dining and a lawn that turns into an ice rink. The first part of The Grove you will actually be able to walk into is indoors, a sports and recreation building next to Kohl's. Dinner comes about a year after that. The lake and the rink, the pieces that make this a town center and not just a cluster of new buildings, have no published opening date yet. If you know that order, the next two years of construction at Gary and Schick are much easier to follow.
What's behind the fence at Gary and Schick right now
In an October 6 editorial, the Daily Herald's editorial board recalled that just two years earlier, Stratford stood as a deserted eyesore at the southeast corner of Gary Avenue and Schick Road. The village bought the old department stores and then the core of the mall, and it demolished everything except the last anchor, Kohl's. That freestanding store is still the only retailer operating on the property.
Some of the work you can't see is already done. According to the Daily Herald's June report, the village has installed all the municipal water, sewer and stormwater infrastructure for the site, paid for with bonds the village issued. The official Grove website describes the whole project as a $375 million mixed-use development, built in partnership with Segovia Partners, Gravity Architecture & Design, Peak Construction Corporation and Christopher B. Burke Engineering.
If you drove past on a recent weekend, the activity was real. The Daily Herald editorial noted several pieces of earth-moving equipment working on the site on the Saturday before its October 6 publication.
The first door to open will lead to an indoor field
The project's first tenant is Bloomingdale Yard, a building of about 100,000 square feet for indoor sports and family recreation. It comes from the owner of the Naperville Yard. Plans call for indoor fields, programs for both children and adults, and a full-service child care center, all near the Kohl's building.
The Yard came first partly because residents asked for something like it. Village Administrator Pietro Scalera told the Daily Herald that the facility meets "one of the uses that residents had pointed out in the survey that we did way back when we first started all of this, and that was a facility that allowed for indoor activities and training and games." That survey was the 2022 resident survey, which the Grove site lists with public forums and open Village Board discussions as the input behind the plan.
Precast concrete walls were going up in June. In early October the editorial board said construction appeared to be on track, and it repeated the expected opening window of the first half of 2027. As this post goes up at the end of October 2026, that window starts in about two months and closes in about eight.
Dinner comes about a year later, on land the restaurants will own
The restaurants are expected in the fourth quarter of 2027, "before the holiday season," according to the September Daily Herald story. That gap between the Yard and the restaurants follows from how the restaurant sites are being handled. Each of the five operators will own the plot it builds on. In June, officials still couldn't name any of them because the parcel sales were under negotiation. The names came out in September, once those deals had moved far enough along.
Here is the lineup, plus where you can try each brand or its operator before the Bloomingdale locations open:
| Restaurant | What it is | Try it now |
|---|---|---|
| GIA MIA | Modern Italian from BG Hospitality Group, with Neapolitan-style wood-fired pizza, fresh pasta and handmade mozzarella. Bloomingdale will be its ninth location. | GIA MIA's existing suburban locations, including Bolingbrook |
| Hacienda Real | Contemporary Mexican, known for authentic decor and flaming cocktails | Bolingbrook, Geneva, Vernon Hills or Yorkville |
| Greek restaurant, name to come | Contemporary Greek from Forte Hospitality Group | The group's Butcher & The Bear, Ithaki Estiatorio or Sapori Trattoria |
| Game On! | Sports bar and entertainment space with games and more than 50 TVs carrying game audio | Only at Fenway Park in Boston for now. Bloomingdale will be its first location outside Boston. |
| Loretta's Last Call | Country music venue and bar with Southern-inspired food and line dancing every Sunday and Wednesday | Boston |
The two Boston concepts come from Patrick Lyons of the Lyons Group, a co-founder of the original House of Blues. The Daily Herald noted that Lyons helped Rosemont develop Parkway Bank Park, including Kings Dining and Entertainment and Saltwater Coastal Grill. If you have spent an evening at that Rosemont entertainment district, it gives you a rough preview of the experience-driven style he has in mind. Coladipietro told the paper he flew to Boston to visit the group's restaurants before signing them, and called them "legit operators."
The Grove site describes Game On! as a dedicated destination for Chicago sports fans, built around the city's teams. Forte's Greek restaurant still has no public name, and the Grove site says it "will be announced at a later date."
The lake, lawn and rink have no opening date yet
Every rendering is built around water, yet the lake has no date of its own. The Daily Herald reported in June that the village would begin the main common areas, including the large lawn and the lake, "in the coming months," and Scalera called the lake a "central focus" of the development. No completion date for the lake or the lawn has been published since.
That matters for the restaurants, too. They are being designed around the lake, and Coladipietro described the goal as "restaurants where you're essentially eating on the water kind of a feel." The waterfront setting is the main thing that will set these locations apart from the same brands in Bolingbrook or Geneva.
The plans for the lawn are concrete. The village is working with the Bloomingdale Park District to schedule events there, such as a seasonal farmers market, bag tournaments, concerts and movies in the park. In winter the lawn becomes an NHL-sized ice rink. The Grove site adds two features dog owners and evening walkers will want to know about: a dedicated dog park with a walk-up bar serving bites and brews, and outdoor common areas where guests can carry drinks from The Grove's bars and restaurants while they walk the property or attend events.
Homes and a second restaurant building come after that
The next phase after the first five restaurants is apartments and townhouses, plus a 33,000-square-foot building with lease space for more fast-casual restaurants and retail. The Grove site lists 280 modern luxury residences in the overall plan. No tenants have been named for the fast-casual building yet. That is where quicker lunch options would go, which the first five sit-down restaurants won't cover.
At the December 2025 site-plan unveiling, Coladipietro recalled what he had told residents at an earlier forum at the golf club when they asked how long the project would take: "five to eight years maybe before the full build-out," according to the Daily Herald. The Yard and the restaurants are the early, dated part of that span.
Here are the milestones to watch, roughly in sequence:
- Bloomingdale Yard opens, expected in the first half of 2027.
- Work on the lake and event lawn continues. No completion date has been announced.
- Forte Hospitality Group announces the name of its Greek restaurant.
- GIA MIA, Hacienda Real, the Greek restaurant, Game On! and Loretta's Last Call open, expected in the fourth quarter of 2027.
- Apartments, townhouses and the 33,000-square-foot fast-casual and retail building follow, as part of a full build-out the village president has estimated at five to eight years.
Until the Yard opens, the best way to follow the project is the Grove website and the Daily Herald's Bloomingdale coverage.
Executive Realty Group has been headquartered in Bloomingdale since 2005, so we're watching the fence at Gary and Schick come down piece by piece too. If you'd like to talk through how The Grove's timeline might fit your own plans, whether that's the next couple of years in your current home or a move a few years from now, reach out and we'll walk through it with you, no pressure. Contact Us.
