If you have lived in Des Plaines for more than a couple of summers, you already know the shape of August here. Thursday nights belong to the Lake Park Bandshell, the Metra plaza empties out by 9, and the only thing that reliably pulls people past Lee Street after dark is a show at the theatre. That version of downtown is still on the calendar this month. It is also the last summer it will look quite like this.
Between the bank building on Ellinwood, the vacant storefronts inside Metropolitan Square, and the L-shaped hole where Oliveti's used to sit, three separate projects are lining up on the same three blocks. None of them opens in August. All of them are being framed and priced right now, while you are at the lake.
The last four Thursdays at the Bandshell
The Live at the Lake series at Lake Park runs June 11 through August 19 this year, with concerts free, open to the public, and held from 6 to 9 p.m. with performances beginning at 7 p.m. The Park District also added a rotating selection of food trucks, with weekly vendors announced on the District's website at DPParks.org, which is the small change that actually matters if you are trying to decide whether to eat before or after.
Two acts worth planning around in the closing stretch:
- The Yacht Rockettes, described by the Park District as Chicago's favorite yacht rock cover band, on a Thursday at the Lake Park Bandshell.
- Classical Blast, a band that fuses classic rock with iconic classical music, blending the sounds of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart with rock hits from the late '60s through today.
The series closes on August 19. After that, the summer center of gravity is supposed to slide back toward Miner and Ellinwood. The interesting question is what will actually be there to catch it.
Three projects, three blocks, one restaurant cluster
Start at Lee and Ellinwood. The white marble bank building on the corner has been closed for years. In December 2024 the city of Des Plaines became the owner of the iconic former bank building at Lee and Ellinwood streets, closing on the sale for $1.89 million, and it announced plans to lease it to the operators of Foxtail on the Lake, the restaurant that opened in 2024 inside the former Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on the north end of Lake Park.
In February 2026, that project got a name. The owners of Foxtail on the Lake decided the new restaurant in the former white marble bank building at Lee and Ellinwood will be named The Dime. The concept borrowed its name from the old Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn. Managing partner David Villegas has told the Journal & Topics the plans could include a rooftop patio, balcony seating, and keeping the structure's huge indoor vault. There is no opening date yet, but the fact that the name is locked and the vault is being designed into the floor plan means the project is past the "if" stage.
Walk two blocks east and the L-shaped hole becomes visible. The brick building that housed Oliveti's Ristorante has been dark since the restaurant closed in 2012, but that is about to change. Under a plan filed with the city, entrepreneurs want to knock down the two-story structure at 1575 Ellinwood St. and construct an equally tall, L-shaped building that would be anchored by an 8,200-square-foot restaurant on the ground floor, with three apartments and storage spaces planned for 5,400 square feet of space on the second floor. The partners include the operator of Park Ridge's Harp and Fiddle restaurant, per city spokesperson Brad Goodman.
Now cut north across Miner and into Metropolitan Square. In April 2026, Metropolitan Square sold for $13.1 million to Metro Des Plaines Development, LLC, based in Bridgeview, which plans to improve some of the vacant tenant spaces with restroom improvements and focus on leasing the currently vacant spaces to new tenants, with Cezary and Eva Jakubowski listed as managers of the LLC and current owners of the Shop & Save grocery store at the north end of Metropolitan Square. The Square has struggled for two decades. Several restaurants have been located there including Cheeseburger in Paradise, Tap House Grill, At 7, and Takito Grill, and all are closed with the most recent being Takito.
Three blocks. Three restaurant plays. One is a destination concept in a landmark building, one is a ground-up rebuild with apartments above, one is a distressed retail center newly owned by the operator of the anchor grocery. Read them together and the pattern is a downtown restaurant cluster on Miner and Ellinwood, which is exactly what the mayor and city council started sketching in early 2025 when they talked openly about paving the way for more outdoor dining, creating a Des Plaines restaurant cluster on Miner Street, and additional opportunities for more dwelling units in the downtown area.
The theatre is doing more work than the tribute lineup suggests
The Des Plaines Theatre on Miner has an August that reads, on paper, like a tribute-band schedule. Summer Sanitarium on August 15, a Tom Petty tribute on August 21, and a stack of Bourbon 'N Brass Speakeasy nights on the second floor. That is accurate but incomplete. The Speakeasy programming is the piece that changes how the block behaves after 9 p.m.: an intimate Bourbon 'N Brass Speakeasy located on the 2nd floor of the Des Plaines Theatre, for evenings of Blues, Jazz, Folk, Rock and Pop, with food and hand-crafted cocktails available for purchase. Cover is a $10 entertainment fee on most nights.
A theatre with a working late-night bar upstairs is the kind of anchor a restaurant cluster is designed around. It is why The Dime's rooftop matters and why the Oliveti's site is being drawn with outdoor seating. Each of these operators is betting that the other two open.
The quiet tell that this is real: in the same February 2025 council meeting where the restaurant cluster was floated, the mayor confirmed the city was close to inking a deal to bring in a well-known restaurant to the central business district, and the Hot Pot Korean restaurant expected to open within a week or two at Ellinwood and Graceland. Fifteen months later, The Dime has a name and Metropolitan Square has a new owner.
A working August walk
Pick a Thursday between now and August 19 and you can hit most of this in a single loop.
| Stop | What to look for | When |
|---|---|---|
| Lake Park Bandshell | Live at the Lake, food trucks, blankets on the lawn | Thursday, 6 to 9 p.m. |
| Lee and Ellinwood | Marble bank building. The future Dime. Check the vault windows. | Any time, sidewalk view |
| 1575 Ellinwood | The old Oliveti's. Read the site as it is now before demolition | Any time, sidewalk view |
| Metropolitan Square plaza | New ownership signage, vacancy count, Shop & Save foot traffic | Daytime is better |
| Des Plaines Theatre | Bourbon 'N Brass on the 2nd floor after the show downstairs | Most nights, 6:30 p.m. doors |
If you are the kind of resident who has walked past Metropolitan Square for years and stopped noticing it, this is the summer to look again. The vacancies are not permanent anymore. They belong to a landlord who has a reason to fill them.
What it adds up to for the people who already live here
None of this changes your August. The concerts still start at 7. Shop & Save is still where it was. The theatre marquee still lists tribute acts. What has changed is the direction the next twelve months are pointed. A year from now the walk from the Metra platform to the Bandshell will pass at least one new restaurant and probably two, and the plaza in the middle of Metropolitan Square will either look meaningfully different or the new owners will have failed publicly enough that you will know why.
For residents, the practical read is this: the summer routine that revolves around the lake is not going away, but it is about to share the weekend with a downtown that finally has more than one reason to stay past dinner. Worth walking the three blocks in August, while the before picture is still intact.
If you want a fact-based read on how any of this is shaping property values on your specific block, or you are thinking about how to time a move, Antonio Sarmiento is happy to talk. Let's Connect.
