How Plaza del Lago Wilmette New Stores Are Changing Weekends
Walk the Sheridan Road side of Plaza del Lago on a Saturday morning in July and the sidewalk sounds different than it did two summers ago. There is a coffee line spilling out of a new all-day restaurant, contractors touching up limestone under a scaffolded storefront, and a young couple carrying a Hill House Home bag past the Jewel loading dock. The 1928 Spanish Court is not being replaced. It is being reweighted.
For years, Plaza del Lago worked like a well-loved errand stop with a few charming holdouts. That version is ending. Between the storefronts already open and the ones with permits pending, the center is on track to become the busiest single block of retail activity on the North Shore, and its center of gravity is pulling foot traffic and tenant strategy for the rest of downtown Wilmette with it. If you live within walking distance, your weekend loop is quietly getting rewritten.
WS Development has 21 signed leases for new retail and restaurant uses at Plaza del Lago. To put that in scale, the center is only a few acres of storefronts. The pace comes from a village-level economic development update from late 2025: seven storefronts opened at Plaza del Lago in 2025, including Space 519, James Perse, Jenni Kayne, Rag & Bone, LoveShackFancy, Veronica Beard, and Hill House Home, with nine more expected in 2026, including Hermès, Peter Millar, The Henry, La Vie Style House, Studs, Oscar de la Renta, Cynthia Rowley, Pilatesville, and Lilly Pulitzer.
Sixteen new tenants in roughly eighteen months, layered over the anchors that already keep the plaza running. Jewel, CVS, Starbucks, and Convito Cafe & Market remain open during construction.
The property itself is worth remembering when you read the tenant list. Plaza del Lago sits at 1515 Sheridan Road and opened in 1928 as Spanish Court, making it the second-oldest open-air shopping center in the United States. WS Development, a Massachusetts-based firm, purchased it in June 2022, and the tenant announcements followed a long design phase focused on facades, sidewalks, and the arcade.
Rather than list every storefront in prose, here is the practical map of what a resident can walk into today:
For a resident, the meaningful shift is that a Saturday errand run no longer has to end at the grocery cart. You can pick up dinner ingredients, sit down for a real breakfast, buy a birthday gift, and be back on your bike before noon without leaving the property.
The Henry is worth its own line because it fills a gap the plaza has had for a long time: a full-service, seven-day, morning-to-late spot. It joins Convito Cafe and Market, Burhop's Seafood, and SPACE 519 as one of the plaza's dining tenants, and it is a rare full-service restaurant to open within the center.
The space itself is 6,540 square feet in the freestanding building at the northwest corner of the plaza, and it was most recently occupied by John Plunkett Interiors, which relocated to Winnetka, and before that housed Convito Cafe & Market before it moved to its current home in the center. That corner had been quiet for months. It is now the plaza's busiest doorway.
"Plaza del Lago was at one time the heart of the community and it is our commitment to return it to that noble calling," said Samantha David, president of WS Development, when Hermès signed on.
That is marketing language, but the tenant mix tracks with it. Coffee, groceries, gifts, dinner, drinks, exercise, a haircut appointment two blocks away. It is a village-square program dressed in luxury brand names.
Here is where a resident's calendar gets interesting. The 2026 additions are not filler tenants.
The Hermès and Oscar de la Renta arrivals reset what North Shore residents drive downtown for. A boutique that used to require a trip to Oak Street or Michigan Avenue is now a walk from the Metra station in Wilmette.
Read the Plaza del Lago story in isolation and it looks like a self-contained project. It is not. It is pulling downtown Wilmette in the same direction.
Two examples from the past twelve months:
Small Cheval took the former Depot Nuevo space at 1139 Wilmette Ave. The restaurant is a spinoff of Chicago's Au Cheval, and the chain has additional locations in Logan Square, Wrigleyville, Fulton Market, Old Town and The Loop. The menu includes burgers, fries, fried chicken, milkshakes and hand-dipped cones, plus beer and wine.
The Mette, a cocktail bar and lounge, is heading into the space at 1165 Wilmette Ave. that has housed Al's Meat Market for more than twenty years. Al's will close in early January 2026, ending a two-decade-plus run in the heart of the village, with owner Joe Spera retiring. The Mette's team plans to take possession in mid-January and open in April or May.
There is a real estate signal buried in that transition. Wilmette currently has no liquor license classification that allows a majority of sales to come from alcohol, so village trustees were asked to formally consider an ordinance creating a new classification for The Mette that permits on-site liquor sales with a larger percentage of sales from alcohol over food. A new license class is a quiet piece of infrastructure. It tells you the village is opening the door to more evening venues, not just daytime retail.
Plaza del Lago is also displacing some tenants back into the village center. Several former Plaza businesses have moved out, including Yellow Bird Stationery and Chantilly Lace, both of which relocated to downtown Wilmette. The net effect is a denser, more usable walking district than existed even three summers ago. The village's own read on the market is candid: downtown Wilmette has very few vacancies overall, and when a business leaves the Village Center, that space is typically leased within one to two months.
Here is a plausible route for a resident who wants to see the change without turning it into a project:
That loop covers three shopping districts, four restaurants, and a working sense of how the village is changing under your feet. It also happens to be a decent orientation tour for a friend visiting from out of town, which is why the plaza's tenant strategy matters beyond retail. It gives residents new reasons to bring people here.
The reason to walk it now rather than in a year is that the plaza is still visibly mid-project. Plaza del Lago has undergone renovation focused on structural upgrades, restored architectural facades, a reimagined Arcade, redesigned parking lots and sidewalks, and new landscaping. You can see the fresh Spanish tile against the older stucco. That contrast disappears the moment the last storefront is finished.
For homeowners in Kenilworth, east Wilmette, and the streets between Sheridan and Green Bay, this is a rare stretch of neighborhood change that is arriving on a public schedule with press releases and permit trails. Most amenity shifts happen store by store, quietly. This one is legible.
If you have been on the fence about whether the North Shore's daily rhythm can hold its own against a trip into the city, this year is when that question gets answered on your side of Sheridan Road.
Wondering what the arrival of Hermès, Oscar de la Renta, and a full-service restaurant block means for the value and desirability of homes in your specific pocket of Wilmette or Kenilworth? The team at The Wexler Gault Group has been watching this stretch of the North Shore closely and would be glad to talk through it over a coffee at, fittingly, The Henry. Get a Complimentary Home Consultation and we will walk you through what the neighborhood shift means for your next move.
CONTACT THE WEXLER GAULT GROUP
THE WEXLER GAULT GROUP
1741 2nd Street Highland Park, IL 60035