Walk south on Prospect Avenue on a Wednesday night this August and you'll pass two buildings that were supposed to be open by now. One has scaffolding and a sign for a coffee shop that first got a village subsidy back in October 2024. The other has been dark since a restaurant announcement almost fourteen months ago, sitting in a building that's been vacant, in whole or in part, since 2019.
Neither is open. And if you've tried to grab a table downtown lately, you already know who's absorbing the difference. It isn't a new operator. It's the same five places that have been doing it for years, because the two newcomers keep missing their own deadlines.
Two years, one deadline pushed twice
Sparrow Coffee first showed up on the village's radar in December 2023, when the roaster whose custom blends supply roughly 160 Chicago restaurants, including about half of the city's Michelin-starred kitchens, pitched a plan to take over the entire building at 100 Park Ave. That meant relocating the State Farm office that had been there and pushing Little Creperie down the block to 95 Park Ave, where it still operates.
In October 2024, the village agreed to a $622,000 subsidy from the downtown tax increment financing district, with owner Chris Chacko committing to finish the renovation within a year. That put the original deadline at Halloween 2025.
It came and went. The village granted a six-month extension, pushing the target to April 30, 2026. That deadline came and went too, not helped by a stop-work order the village issued in early March 2026 over fencing and dirt-on-the-street issues at the site, which was lifted within days once the crew cleared it up. By mid-April, the board approved a second six-month extension, this time with Halloween 2026 as the new line.
As of an August 6 update, Village Manager Paul Dalen told Patch he didn't have a grand opening date. Village President Eric Tech's read in the July-August village newsletter was that the project was making "excellent progress" and would open in the "coming months." Chacko, for his part, has been consistent that construction is fluid and that the delays aren't for lack of trying. Chacko has said the crew is doing everything within its means to move fast.
Run the math and the current deadline, this Halloween, would put the total build-out at exactly two years past the original signing. That's double the twelve months Chacko originally committed to, on a subsidy that's already more than half a million dollars.
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Subsidy agreement signed | October 2024 |
| Original deadline (1 year) | October 31, 2025 |
| First extension granted | October 2025 |
| First extended deadline | April 30, 2026 |
| Stop-work order issued and lifted | March 2026 |
| Second extension granted | April 2026 |
| Current deadline | October 31, 2026 |
Fourteen months later, 27 South Prospect is still dark
The other project has an even longer runway of setbacks. Prospect Tavern was first proposed in June 2025 for the long-vacant storefronts at 27 and 29 S. Prospect Ave, a building that's been empty since Sue's Cakery closed in 2019. Owner Chase Lofti, who runs a similar restaurant in Hinsdale, asked for $265,000 from the downtown TIF toward a roughly $600,000 renovation.
The Village Board split and rejected the deal in September 2025. The sticking point was parking: Lofti wanted five spots on Prospect Avenue reserved for outdoor dining, and the board balked even at a reduced ask of three. Lofti told Patch at the time he'd walk away entirely, and that residents would keep driving to Hinsdale or Westmont for his style of food.
The deal came back in December 2025 with the parking condition dropped, and Lofti signed in January. By April, though, village staff found no permits pulled and no construction documents filed, and recommended the board terminate the agreement outright for default. The board gave him one more chance instead. Lofti called himself "100 percent committed" and said he'd apply for a demolition permit that week.
By mid-May, acting Village Manager Paul Dalen's assessment hadn't improved. In a memo to the board, he wrote plainly that the recipient had continued to fail to perform its obligations under the agreement. The building is still dark.
All three of downtown's biggest open questions, it turns out, ran through the same room on the same night. On April 13, 2026, the Village Board granted Sparrow's second six-month extension, voted to give Prospect Tavern another chance rather than terminate its agreement, and held a special meeting on the direction of a proposed downtown plaza redesign. One meeting, three decisions about what Prospect Avenue looks like going forward, and two of the three ended in more waiting.
The village is also redesigning the block
Underneath both stalled projects, Clarendon Hills has been working through a separate Downtown Improvement Plan, including a proposed plaza reconfiguration for the business district. The village brought in planning firm Houseal Lavigne to present a concept at its March 16, 2026 board meeting, held a community listening session on June 22, and has another public discussion scheduled for September 8 at Village Hall. The plaza would be funded through the same downtown TIF district, meaning no direct cost to individual homeowners.
Some residents have floated the idea of putting the plaza redesign on hold until they see what a fully open Sparrow actually does for foot traffic on that block. It's a reasonable instinct. When your two most-discussed downtown projects have each blown through multiple deadlines, betting the design of the whole streetscape on their momentum is a real question worth asking at that September meeting.
Who's actually carrying downtown right now
None of this has stopped Clarendon Hills from eating and drinking well this year. It just means the same handful of doors are doing all the work:
- Ginger Wasabi, 31 S. Prospect Ave, took over the former Wasabi Restaurant & Bar space under new ownership from Clarendon Hills residents Tao Duan and Dongyong Wei starting January 2025, now serving a combined Chinese and Japanese menu.
- Thassos Greek Restaurant, downtown, multi-level dining with a seasonal patio built around Greek staples.
- Clarendon Hills Country House, a longtime downtown spot for burgers and casual comfort food.
- The Open Door Taproom and Bottleshop, 20 S. Prospect Ave, a family-run bar and grill downtown.
- Tierra Distilling Co. and Cafe, downtown's craft distillery, pouring brandies and whiskies in a tasting-room format.
That's the full bench. No net-new seats have entered the downtown grid since either project broke ground, which is why a Wednesday evening reservation at Thassos or the Country House this fall is worth treating like a plan rather than an assumption.
What's actually on the calendar
Daisy Days already came and went in June, with its usual carnival rides and beer tent on North Prospect. The next real test of downtown's capacity is Oktoberfest on September 12, hosted by the Clarendon Hills Firefighters Association, which draws crowds to both South Prospect Ave and Burlington Plaza for German beer, food trucks, and live music. It'll be the first big gathering since the last extension deadline was set for Sparrow, and worth watching simply because it's the same five doors handling the same size crowd they handled last year.
If either project actually opens before the leaves turn, it'll be news. If Halloween comes and goes again for Sparrow, or the Village Board finally pulls the plug on Prospect Tavern's second chance, that'll be news too. Either way, the village posts its board agendas at clarendonhills.us, and it's the one feed worth checking if you want to know before your neighbors do.
Downtown Clarendon Hills isn't short on good places to eat. It's short on new ones, and after two years of extensions and a seven-year-vacant storefront, that's the actual story behind the quiet on Prospect Avenue this fall.
If you're curious what any of this shift in downtown activity has done for home values on the blocks nearest Prospect Avenue, Loncar Realty tracks the Clarendon Hills market closely and can walk you through what's changed. Request your instant home valuation to see where your property stands today.
