Downtown Downers Grove's Pandemic Dining Corrals Are Becoming Permanent Corners

Since 2020, outdoor dining in downtown Downers Grove has meant tables set in on-street parking spaces behind temporary barriers. The work that began fencing off Main Street corners in July, three on the east side first and two on the west side since late September, ends that arrangement. Those corners are being rebuilt as permanent public spaces, with masonry seat walls, planters, shade structures and bases for public art, and they are scheduled to be finished in November.

The difference reaches past the restaurants. A barricaded parking space was a restaurant's patio for the season. The new spaces are called Flexible Amenity Areas, and the Village describes them as places for outdoor dining, casual seating, community gatherings and public art displays. Downtown is getting five small plazas that stay in place all year.

Six seasons of concrete barriers

The curbside dining most people now picture as normal downtown started as a pandemic measure. Village staff said the outdoor dining program first allowed cafés in on-street parking spaces in 2020. By 2024 it had grown to seven dining areas behind temporary barricades. A February 2025 proposal to the Village Council set the goal of removing those barricades and moving cafés into designed spaces protected by bollards, walls or fencing.

The broader blueprint is the Guiding DG Streetscapes Plan, which the Village Council adopted on April 8, 2025. Its guiding principles say flexible amenity areas should reclaim underused vehicle space for pedestrians and hold dining, cultural amenities, landscaping or other pedestrian uses. Public gathering space and programmed events appear as a separate principle.

Parking was the obvious question. The preferred downtown-wide design estimated a net loss of 17 on-street parking spaces, against the 18 to 23 spaces that seasonal outdoor dining already took up. That 17-space figure covers the whole streetscape design, not just these five corners. At a September 2025 Council discussion, staff confirmed that lane widths would stay the same, and the mayor said the design would not significantly reduce parking compared with the existing outdoor dining setups. Downtown keeps roughly the same curb space it gave to dining over the last few summers. The difference is that the space is now permanent, built from masonry, and open to the public.

Corner by corner, as of the Village's latest update

Construction began the week of July 6 at three east-side intersections, as Downers Grove Wire reported in September. Businesses on the west side of Main north of Curtiss and south of the railroad tracks were told their stretch would start Sept. 21. The restaurant names below come from Village planning and contract documents that tie each location to its neighboring business.

The east side is ahead. In its Oct. 16 project update, the Village reported that masonry for the knee walls on the east side of Main was finished. On the west side, the contractor was working on foundations and replacing the sidewalk along the storefronts. The same update said that this week crews would keep working on west-side foundations, start the west-side knee walls, and spread black dirt in the east-side planters. Utility work at the two west-side sites, Burlington west of Main and Main north of Curtiss, was finished the week of Oct. 9.

The finished spaces follow the design package presented to the Council in September 2025. It calls for shade structures with solar panels to power lighting and electrical outlets, masonry seat walls, benches, planters, public art bases, bollards, gateway signs, landscaping and irrigation. Downers Grove Wire reported that four of the five areas will include public art installations. Four existing lights are coming out to make room: one at the Wasabi location, one at the Pierce Tavern corner, and two at the Foxtail corner on Maple.

Why the price doubled, and what the shade bought

The first number residents heard was much smaller. A preliminary estimate in September 2025 put the five areas at $1.27 million, plus about $560,000 for shade structures and string lights, for a total of about $1.83 million. In April 2026 the Village awarded the job to Landmark Contractors, Inc. of Huntley for $3,608,881.40. The FY2026 Capital Fund budget had set aside $1.8 million, and the memo said the additional money was available in that fund.

The award memo also priced cheaper versions. Building all five areas without shade structures came to $2,055,727. Building only the three east-side areas with shades came to $2,071,760.86. Compared with the no-shade option, the shade structures added about $1.55 million. The Council chose shades at all five corners, which made shade the most expensive single decision in the project.

The vote on April 14, 2026, was 5 to 2. Commissioners Sarver and Tully voted no. Tully objected that the cost had doubled from the original $1.8 million figure and raised concerns about the shade structures and long-term maintenance. Shaw Local's My Suburban Life reported the same split, with commissioners divided over the cost, the shades, and whether the spaces amounted to a long-term investment in downtown.

The memo also says what the Village isn't counting on. Asked how much food and beverage tax revenue the spaces would bring in, staff said they projected no change. The $3.6 million pays for shaded, lit, landscaped corners that people can use when no café tables are out, and the solar-powered shade structures are what keep those corners usable after summer.

The calendar the corners are being finished against

The Village project page lists November 2026 as the end date and warns that all work depends on the weather and schedules may change. November is also when the downtown calendar fills up, so the timing matters for anyone planning to be downtown.

Halloween comes first, while the west side is still under construction:

• Saturday, Oct. 24, 9 a.m. to noon: Window painting downtown, with paint pickup at 933A Curtiss St. The Downers Grove Historical Society's Living Cemetery runs the same morning, 10 a.m. to noon, at Main Street Cemetery.
• Sunday, Oct. 25, noon to 1 p.m.: The Annual Halloween Fest, costume contest and parade at Fishel Park, followed by trick-or-treating at downtown businesses from 1 to 3 p.m.
• Saturday, Oct. 31: Village trick-or-treating, with no set hours. The Village recommends going during daylight.

Details are on the Downtown Downers Grove Halloween page and in the Village's trick-or-treat notice.

The holiday season is when the new corners will get their first real use. The Main Street Tree Lighting is Friday, Nov. 27, at 4:30 p.m. at the Main Street Train Station. That's a short walk from the two Burlington sites, the ones closest to the tracks. The rest of the downtown holiday calendar follows right after.

• Candy Cane Cash runs Nov. 27 through Dec. 31.
• The Holiday Window Contest runs Fridays through Sundays, Nov. 27 to Dec. 13.
• Small Business Saturday is Nov. 28.
• Santa visits run 1 to 4 p.m. on Nov. 28 and 29, Dec. 5 and 6, Dec. 12 and 13, and Dec. 19 and 20.
• Free wagonette rides run Nov. 29, 1 to 4 p.m.
• Merry Madness is Thursday, Dec. 10, 5 to 8 p.m.

The restaurant lineup around the new corners will keep changing into winter. Ranalli's, the Chicago pizzeria opening its first suburban location at 5200 Main St., moved its target from this fall to January 2027 because of shifting construction timelines, Patch reported in August. The Rec League at 844 Warren Ave. is under construction, and the Downers Grove Economic Development Corporation lists its completion as late 2026. Its liquor license application was headed to the Liquor Commission's Oct. 1 agenda, Patch reported in September.

If the weather holds, the tree lighting crowd on Nov. 27 will be the first big gathering downtown with the barriers gone. In their place will be seat walls, planters and shade structures at all five corners.

At Kimberly Zahand, we keep track of downtown projects like the Flexible Amenity Areas, from the Council vote through the final planter. If you live near Main Street and want to know what the new corners could mean for your block, or you're thinking about how to time a move around the next stretch of downtown change, let's work together.