Drive past the old Dominick's on Lake-Cook Road this month and you'll see chain-link fencing, a gutted interior, and a parking lot that's mostly empty except for contractor trucks. It's been that way, more or less, for a decade. On the south end of the village, meanwhile, a small storefront cafe has spent the summer working toward an opening that most residents haven't clocked yet.
Both of these are part of the same story, but they're not moving at the same speed. Buffalo Grove's Lake-Cook corridor is getting two national grocers, a fitness studio, and a coffee chain within roughly the same twelve-month announcement window. None of it will be open before 2027. The change that's actually close enough to touch is happening somewhere smaller, and it's easy to miss if you weren't already looking for it.
Two grocers, one corridor, same year
The headline version of this story is straightforward. Shorewood Development Group secured a lease with Sprouts Farmers Market for the long-vacant Dominick's space in Chase Plaza, at the corner of Arlington Heights and Lake-Cook roads. It will be Sprouts' first Illinois location, occupying about 27,000 square feet next to a Club Studio fitness tenant already confirmed for the same building.
Further along Lake-Cook Road, at the intersection with McHenry Road, the village is redeveloping another site into The Clove, a mixed residential and entertainment project. According to village officials, a Whole Foods Market and a Dutch Bros coffee location are both slated to open there, though neither has a confirmed opening date yet.
Put those two projects next to each other and Buffalo Grove is looking at two grocery anchors landing on the same corridor inside the same stretch of years. Village Manager Dane Bragg framed it plainly: Buffalo Grove has been a strong grocery market for a long time, and this just adds to the mix.
Why now, and why two at once
It's tempting to read this as Buffalo Grove suddenly becoming a hot commercial address. The more accurate read has less to do with the village and more to do with what's happening industry-wide. Retail analyst John Melaniphy told the Daily Herald that grocery chains aren't doing much new ground-up construction right now. Instead, growth is coming from chains moving into what he calls second-generation space, meaning buildings that already exist and already sat empty. He also pointed to something specific: the proposed Albertsons-Kroger merger caused a lot of grocers in the Chicago area to put development plans on hold while that deal worked its way through.
That timing matters for Buffalo Grove specifically. The old Dominick's had been sitting vacant since long before Sprouts ever looked at it. It became attractive real estate at the exact moment the grocery industry paused new building and started hunting for existing boxes to fill. Village President Eric Smith called the Chase Plaza project meaningful progress on a site that had sat empty for "more than a decade," and that decade of vacancy is precisely what made the property available when the timing lined up.
None of this changes what residents will actually experience this fall. Construction on the Sprouts space is underway, but the company has confirmed the store won't open until 2027. The Clove's Whole Foods and Dutch Bros don't have public opening dates at all yet.
What's actually changing, and when
Here's the corridor laid out plainly, since the announcements and the openings are not the same thing:
| Business | Status as of August 2026 | Location |
|---|---|---|
| The Buffalo (restaurant and ice cream parlor) | Closed for good last year | Chase Plaza |
| Sprouts Farmers Market | Under construction, opening 2027 | 1160 W. Lake-Cook Road, former Dominick's |
| Club Studio fitness | Confirmed tenant alongside Sprouts | Chase Plaza, north building |
| Whole Foods Market | Announced, no opening date set | The Clove, Lake-Cook and McHenry |
| Dutch Bros coffee | Announced, no opening date set | The Clove |
| Moloco Cafe | Aiming for a summer 2026 opening | 814 S Buffalo Grove Road, Plaza At Buffalo Grove |
If you're planning your errands around what's coming to Lake-Cook Road, the honest answer is: not much yet, and not for a while.
The one that's actually close
The Buffalo, the restaurant and ice cream parlor that had anchored Chase Plaza for years, closed for good last year, which is part of what opened the door for this whole redevelopment push in the first place. Its absence is the quiet backstory behind the Sprouts announcement.
Meanwhile, on the south end of the village, two local real estate agents, Tetiana Stadnyk and Alina Predolyak, have been building out a cafe and cocktail bar called Moloco Cafe at 814 S Buffalo Grove Road, in the Plaza At Buffalo Grove shopping center near the Dundee Road intersection. The space shares a building with La Presa Restaurant and The Continental Restaurant & Banquets. Stadnyk and Predolyak had been wanting to open their own coffee and cocktail spot for a while, and as of early June they were targeting a July opening, with construction already underway. Keep an eye on that strip. It's a smaller story than a 27,000-square-foot grocery anchor, but it's the one that's actually within reach.
The calendar doesn't wait for construction
While the corridor sorts itself out, the rest of the village's summer routine is running on its usual schedule.
- Buffalo Grove Farmers Market runs Sundays through October 11, 2026, from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Mike Rylko Community Park. That leaves a handful of Sundays before the season wraps. One local quirk worth knowing if you walk your dog on weekends: per village ordinance, dogs aren't allowed at the market.
- Buffalo Grove Days returns September 3 through 7 at Mike Rylko Community Park, a tradition that goes back to 1961 and always closes out on Labor Day. The lineup this year includes acts like Hi Infidelity and a Bee Gees tribute band called The Brothers Gibb, with Nashville Electric Co. taking the stage Sunday afternoon. A five-day unlimited-ride megaband runs $70 if you buy in advance. The weekend also includes the annual parade down Buffalo Grove Road and Deerfield Parkway and the Meet Me on Main Street business and craft fair.
None of that depends on when Sprouts opens.
What the corridor says about the village right now
Buffalo Grove was just named the #1 Best Place to Live in Illinois and #15 nationally in U.S. News & World Report's newly released 2026-2027 rankings, a list built on quality of life, job market, and overall livability. The Lake-Cook corridor's slow, staggered rebuild fits that same pattern. It's not a single dramatic reopening. It's several separate bets landing in the same place at once, most of them years from being usable, one of them close enough that you could be sitting in it before the grocery anchors ever open their doors.
If you're weighing what a corner of town like this actually adds to daily life here, or wondering how projects like this tend to affect what's happening a few blocks over, that's exactly the kind of on-the-ground read the C Starr Team tracks for buyers and sellers across Buffalo Grove and the rest of the northwest suburbs. Reach out any time you want a local, straight answer instead of a guess.
