Drive past Gary Avenue and Army Trail Road this summer and you will see something that has not been true at that corner in a long time: cranes, prefabricated concrete panels, and a construction fence that means work rather than waiting. As of late June 2026, vertical construction is underway on Bloomingdale Yard, the first confirmed tenant of the site everyone still calls Stratford Square. It is the first physical evidence, after nearly two years of renderings and press conferences, that something is actually rising out of the ground.
But here is the part most coverage of this project skips past. The mall was not really killed by a wrecking ball in 2024. It was killed years earlier, on paper, while Kohl's stayed open and a brand-new Woodman's Market sat right next door doing steady business. Understanding that gap between when Stratford Square looked alive and when it was already gone tells you more about what to expect from The Grove at Bloomingdale than any rendering does.
The Number That Explains Why Nobody Blinked
Local tax records reported at the time show the mall's assessed value falling from $20.3 million in 2012 to just $466,080 by 2021. That is not a gradual decline. That is a property functionally worth nothing to the tax rolls, sitting in plain sight, for years before anyone touched a demolition permit.
Meanwhile, Woodman's Food Market opened its doors on the site on August 11, 2021, in the space once occupied by Marshall Field's and then Macy's. Kohl's never left. For a shopper driving past, the mall didn't look dead. It looked like it had a grocery store, a department store, and a lot of empty storefronts, which is a familiar look for aging retail everywhere. The assessed value tells a different story: the core of the mall had already lost more than 97 percent of its taxable worth before the Village of Bloomingdale filed a single acquisition paperwork.
That mismatch, between how a place looks and what it is actually worth on paper, is why the 2024 closure caught some residents off guard even though village leaders had been pushing toward it since at least 2022. Village President Franco Coladipietro had been calling the property a vacant eyesore in public meetings well before most people register a mall as being in real trouble.
What Is Actually True Right Now
Strip away the renderings and here is what has physically happened on the ground, in order:
- January 2024: the village purchased the mall's core, settling a lawsuit it had filed against then-owner Namdar Realty Group, and gave remaining tenants 90 days' notice.
- April 21, 2024: Stratford Square closed to the public.
- October 2024 through June 2025: demolition, with Kohl's left standing as the only surviving anchor.
- December 10, 2025: the village released official site plans, a new name and logo for The Grove at Bloomingdale, and its first confirmed tenant.
- Since January 2026: utility infrastructure work on the site.
- As of June 2026: vertical construction on Bloomingdale Yard itself, with prefabricated concrete walls going up.
That is a two and a half year gap between closure and the first walls standing. If you have been waiting to see something other than dirt and fencing, this summer is the first time that patience actually pays off.
The confirmed anchor, Bloomingdale Yard, is a 100,000 square foot indoor sports and recreation facility with leagues and training for soccer and football, a full childcare center, after school sports, birthday party packages, and a play area for younger kids. It comes from the same company behind Westmont Yard, which opened in 2010, and Naperville Yard, which opened in 2016. Those two locations reportedly draw about 260,000 visitors a year each, which is the scale the village is betting on to make the rest of the site feel used rather than just built.
Why You Have Not Heard Any Restaurant Names Yet
This is the part that separates rumor from what village staff will actually say on the record. According to reporting from late June 2026, officials cannot name any restaurant tenants yet, not because nothing has been decided, but because contract negotiations on the sale of individual parcels are still in progress. That is a meaningfully different situation than "nothing is happening." Parcels are being negotiated. Names simply are not final enough to attach to a press release.
Village Administrator Pietro Scalera has been blunt about the alternative: without the village stepping in to acquire and demolish the property itself, what stood there before would still be standing today. The redevelopment is happening because the village bought the land outright, spending more than $17 million to acquire it and financing the demolition and build-out through a mix of tax increment financing and a bond sale. That is a different funding structure than waiting for a private developer to make the numbers work, and it is part of why the timeline has moved faster than typical mall redevelopments even though it still feels slow to anyone driving past weekly.
Here is a quick way to keep the confirmed and the still-negotiated pieces straight:
| Confirmed | Still Unconfirmed |
|---|---|
| Bloomingdale Yard, 100,000 sq ft, opening 2027 | Specific restaurant tenants |
| Man-made lake with water features | Exact retail lineup |
| 280 planned residential units | Timeline for residential move-in |
| Central lawn for concerts, festivals, and a winter ice rink | Names of entertainment tenants |
| Site partners: Segovia Partners, Gravity Architecture & Design, Peak Construction Corporation, Christopher B. Burke Engineering | Grand opening date for the full site |
The full build-out is expected to take five to eight years according to village statements, with Bloomingdale Yard itself targeted for 2027. That framing matters for anyone tired of asking "when does it open" and getting a shrug. The honest answer is that one piece opens in 2027, and the rest arrives in phases over most of a decade.
The Small Things Already Changing Nearby
While the big project inches forward one concrete panel at a time, smaller changes are already visible in town this year. Tievoli Pizza Bar, a family-owned pizzeria known for its New York and Detroit style pies, announced in June 2026 that it purchased 119 W. Lake St., the former home of Antica Pizza, for its second location. The Bloomingdale spot will be the first expansion outside the original Palatine restaurant, opened in early 2023 by Chef Giovanni Labbate and his wife Adrianna Labbate, who is leading the interior design of the new space. It is expected to open later this year or in early 2027, roughly the same window as Bloomingdale Yard.
That timing is not a coincidence worth overreading, but it is worth noticing. Two very different projects, a family pizzeria taking over an existing storefront and a $78 million municipal redevelopment, are converging on the same rough calendar window. If you are the kind of resident who tracks what is changing on your regular drive through town, 2027 is shaping up to be the year several of these threads land at once.
The village has also been running community events like the Bloomingdale Maker's Market, with vendors, food trucks, and live entertainment on a recurring schedule throughout the year. Village planning documents describe eventually partnering with the Bloomingdale Park District to run similar programming, farmers markets, bag tournaments, concerts, and movies, directly on The Grove's central lawn, which will convert into an ice rink each winter. That is the long-term vision for where community gathering spots like this end up living. For now, the actual event lawn is still part of a construction site, so the Maker's Market and events like it continue on their established footprints around the village.
What This Means If You Live Here
If you have been half following this story through headlines and renderings, the honest summary is this: the site is no longer just dirt, but it is also nowhere near finished, and the gap between what is confirmed and what is speculated is wider than most coverage lets on. Bloomingdale Yard is real and visibly under construction. The lake, the residences, the restaurants, and the entertainment tenants are planned but not yet locked into contracts you can point to. Kohl's and Woodman's, the two businesses that quietly kept the corner from feeling completely abandoned for years, are still exactly where they have always been.
The mall's real lesson was already written in its assessed value a decade before anyone picked up a bulldozer. Paper deaths happen quietly. Physical rebuilding happens in public, on a timeline measured in years, not seasons. This summer marks the first season where Bloomingdale can watch that rebuilding instead of just reading about it.
For updates on tenant announcements and construction milestones as they become official, the village's own Grove page is the source that gets updated first, well before it turns into secondhand headlines.
If you are weighing what a changing corner like this means for a home purchase, a sale, or simply understanding how a neighborhood is trending, that is exactly the kind of on the ground context The Luxury Connection Home Team tracks for clients across Bloomingdale and the surrounding suburbs. Schedule a consultation and we will walk you through what is actually happening, not just what is rendered.
