What's New on Elk Grove Village's West Side This Year
September 17, 2026
September 17, 2026
If you drove past Meacham and Biesterfield yesterday, the parking lot was fuller than it's been in years. The Elk Grove Ice Center opened to the public on September 8, closing out its construction schedule. That timing matters: youth hockey leagues lock in their season commitments in August, not October.
That rink is one piece of what's changing on this side of the village right now. Two drive-thrus are going up a few hundred feet away. Over at Arlington Heights and Higgins roads, on the village's western edge, the bakery and the bike shop you've probably been going to for years just moved into brand new buildings, and the strip mall they left behind is getting ready to come down for an apartment building. The projects were announced separately, but some of the same development partners are involved across the west side.
The Elk Grove Ice Center cost $32.5 million to build at Meacham and Biesterfield roads. Construction started last August, and the Nicholas Family of Companies, through its Mount Prospect-based arm Nicholas & Associates, kept the project on a tight clock.
The village bought the 9.7-acre site for $4.5 million from four limited liability companies that had controlled the land for years, then resold it to the developer at that same $4.5 million, folding the cost into a larger $27 million zero-interest loan that also covered construction. Developer Nick Papanicholas personally guaranteed the loan and has 20 years to pay it back.
The facility opened with two Olympic-sized rinks and 372 parking spaces. Three programs are already calling it home:
Hatty's Club, the planned second-floor restaurant overlooking the ice, and Hatty's Market, a grab-and-go stop on the ground floor, were both still under construction on opening day. If you show up this month expecting a full concession menu, bring snacks.
The two retail outlots flanking the rink were sold to the same development group, Nicholas/Wingspan, for $1 each last year. That's not a typo. Culver's and Dutch Bros are planned as tenants.
The Daily Herald quoted Mayor Craig Johnson making the case plainly at his April state of the village address:
"They're brewing soon."
He was talking about Dutch Bros, which will be one of the first locations of the West Coast drive-thru chain to reach the Chicago suburbs, following an opening in Melrose Park and ahead of one expected in Oak Park. Culver's takes the second outlot. Both are targeting a fall 2026 opening, though as of this spring a Dutch Bros spokesperson said the location was still in the very early stages of planning, so treat the timeline as a target rather than a promise. An existing Burger King sits on a separate parcel at the same corner, meaning this stretch of Meacham will go from one drive-thru option to three within a matter of months.
At Arlington Heights and Higgins roads, a slower version of the same story has been playing out for two years. The corner used to be Elk Grove Woods Plaza, a 1959 shopping center that had, at various points, housed a bank, a bowling alley, a gas station, and a restaurant. The village bought the aging property for $17.5 million, an amount it expects developer Wingspan Development Group, itself headquartered in neighboring Mount Prospect, to repay in full, and set the whole thing in motion.
The project has a name now: The Vue. It came out of a village-run naming contest, and officials deliberately spelled it "vue" instead of "view" so it wouldn't get confused with a daytime talk show.
Phase one is done. Two new retail buildings along Higgins Road, roughly 46,000 square feet combined, opened earlier this year and now house the longtime tenants who used to operate out of the old strip center:
Nobody had to find a new town for their favorite bakery run. It's still there, just in a newer building a few hundred feet from where it used to sit.
The rest of the old plaza is coming down. Village trustees cleared the way for demolition and environmental cleanup earlier this year, work that turned out to be more involved than planned. A former dry cleaners on the site left contamination that required extra excavation, and Wingspan needed an additional $700,000 in village funding to cover it before securing a No Further Remediation letter from the Illinois EPA. Once the site is cleared, construction starts on a five-story, 538,000-square-foot apartment building with 271 units, a pool, and a parking garage, plus 16 three-story rental rowhomes. The village put the total value of the finished project at $150 million.
The most visible piece for anyone who walks or bikes in the area will be the pedestrian bridge. It's a 3,900-square-foot structure standing 35 feet tall, built to span Arlington Heights Road with ADA switchbacks and a lookout point, connecting The Vue directly to the Busse Woods Forest Preserve trail system. It's projected to open sometime in 2026.
Here's what connects the west-side projects. Nicholas Family of Companies and Wingspan Development Group are both active in Elk Grove Village this year and headquartered a few miles away in Mount Prospect. Nicholas/Wingspan appears as the joint venture on paperwork for the ice rink outlots, while Wingspan is developing The Vue through its subsidiary VUE LA LLC. The village used a mix of land sales, tax increment financing, village funding, and a zero-interest loan backed by village cash reserves in the projects described here.
Together, these projects are changing the west side through recreation, retail and housing. The ice center, outlots and The Vue involve public investment and private development partners, with tenants including Dutch Bros, Culver's, Jarosch Bakery and Tensuke Market.
If you're local, here's the practical version. The ice arena is open now, though the restaurant and training center inside are still finishing up, so don't plan a full evening there yet. Dutch Bros and Culver's are targeting a fall opening at Meacham and Biesterfield, but neither has confirmed a hard date, so keep an eye on the corner rather than circling a specific week. And if you've been wondering where your bakery run went, it's still Jarosch, still a few minutes from where it always was, just in a new building at The Vue with Tensuke, Vini's, and 7 Mile Cycles as neighbors. The pedestrian bridge to Busse Woods is the one piece still worth watching for a firm date, since it's the connector that ties the whole redevelopment back to the trail system most residents already use.
None of this required anyone to move. It just changed what's on the corners people already drive past every week.
If you're curious how any of this might affect property values on the west side, or you're weighing a move within the village and want a candid read on what's actually changing versus what's still just a rendering, Sharon Lynch has been watching Elk Grove Village and the surrounding Northwest suburbs since 1993. Let's Connect.
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