Marvin Barsky was on his way to look at a different building entirely when he saw the "For Lease" sign. He and Rocio Carreras, the woman who would become general manager of his next restaurant, were driving through downtown Glenview to tour a property that, as it turned out, wasn't the one. The empty storefront they passed instead sat inside a new apartment building called Cerca, at 1850 Glenview Road. Barsky is 81. He had closed his restaurant's Old Orchard Mall location eight years earlier, after 31 years in Skokie, and he still hears from regulars every week asking when it's coming back. That accidental drive-by is why The Bagel, the Jewish deli that's been feeding the North Shore since 1950, is now aiming for a Labor Day opening a few blocks from Glenview's Metra stop.
That story is worth sitting with, because it explains something the restaurant openings list on its own doesn't. Downtown Glenview is in the middle of a genuine building boom right now, but the businesses filling those storefronts aren't mostly new arrivals discovering a hot suburb. They're old ones, returning to a version of the neighborhood they used to belong to, or relocating within it rather than leaving. If you've noticed the construction fencing and wondered what's actually happening on Waukegan and Glenview Roads this year, the honest answer is a homecoming as much as a boom.
The deli that never really left
The Bagel's history in the north suburbs runs deeper than most people driving past its future storefront realize. The restaurant started in 1950 in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, run by two Holocaust survivors who built it into a North Shore institution once it landed at Old Orchard Mall. That location closed in 2018, but the Lakeview restaurant on Broadway kept going, run for decades by the founders' family before Barsky took it over in 2023.
"I'm confident that the name, The Bagel, people will remember it," Barsky told The Record North Shore in March. "I feel real confident that, hopefully, we can bring back some of our old customers."
The Glenview location is planned as a 5,000-square-foot space seating up to 150 people, with a liquor license and a party room, staffed by roughly 35 to 40 employees. Carreras will run it day to day. Her father has worked as The Bagel's head chef for about 40 years, which means the matzo ball soup and lox platters showing up in Glenview will come from the same kitchen lineage that made the Old Orchard version a fixture for three decades. Whether it opens by Labor Day or slips into late fall, as some coverage has suggested is possible, the point stands: this isn't a national chain testing the suburbs. It's a business coming home to a neighborhood that never stopped asking for it.
Three blocks, not somewhere else
Spiro's Deli tells a quieter version of the same story. It's been a Glenview fixture since 1962, most recently at 1210 Waukegan Road for the last 30 years. Rather than closing when its lease came up, the owner chose to move a few blocks to the northeast corner of Glenview Road and Lehigh Avenue, specifically to be part of the downtown district's redevelopment. The Bomber, the chicken pita, the Italian beef and gyros are all staying on the menu, and hours are extending to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. As of the most recent update from the village, the new space is in its final stretch, with parking lot paving and a new patio nearly finished while interior work wraps up.
It's a small distinction, but it matters if you live nearby: this isn't a 60-year-old business getting priced out. It's a 60-year-old business choosing to be closer to the center of things.
The building where Glenview signed its own name
Not every new tenant downtown is a returning local. The Foxtail, a Mediterranean restaurant with existing locations in Des Plaines and Downers Grove, is opening its third outpost in Glenview. What makes it notable isn't the cuisine, it's the address. The Foxtail is moving into the Glen View House, the building where Glenview's original village charter was adopted and signed in 1899. Most of the interior work is done, and the patios out front and back are under construction, with an opening targeted for this August or September.
Even the genuinely new arrivals downtown are landing in buildings that already meant something to the village, rather than in a stripped lot or a strip mall shell. That pattern shows up again and again once you start looking for it.
The new names filling in around them
None of this means downtown Glenview is standing still waiting for old friends to come back. A cluster of newer businesses opened in a tight window between mid-2025 and early 2026, giving the district the kind of walkable density it didn't have a few years ago:
- Jackman & Co., opened July 22, 2025
- Hometown Coffee and Juice, which also has locations in Glencoe, Lake Forest and Winnetka, opened November 10, 2025
- Ovvio Italian Taverna, formerly Bar Trullo, from Nick Philippas of North Branch Pizza and Burger Company and Joe Donut Café, opened December 4, 2025 in a converted former service station on Waukegan Road
- Zenzi Den, a Japanese-influenced concept from Ballyhoo Hospitality, the same group behind Jackman & Co., opened earlier this year
That last detail about Ovvio is worth pausing on. The village backed the conversion of that old filling station with a $550,000 forgivable loan back in 2023, part of a broader push that has put more than $13 million in grants and loans behind downtown projects since the village adopted its downtown strategic plan in 2021. That's public money doing real work on a specific corner, not an abstract policy.
What the corner still owes you
Downtown Glenview is shaped like an L, with Waukegan Road running north to south and Glenview Road running east to west, meeting at one intersection. Waukegan has historically been the wider, more auto-oriented stretch, while Glenview Road has the more pedestrian feel. That's part of why Smoque BBQ, the Chicago barbecue restaurant that's spent two decades collecting national attention out of Old Irving Park, picked a spot at the southwest corner of Waukegan and Grove for its first suburban location. Construction there is expected to start sometime this year.
The village has also been working on the practical side of all this growth. A downtown revitalization page tracks project status in real time, and a parking study from Walker Consultants was presented to the Village Board this spring, alongside a new map and video showing where to actually park downtown now that so much has changed at once. It's worth a glance before your next dinner reservation.
Cerca itself, the building where The Bagel is headed, had its official ribbon cutting on June 17 and welcomed its first residents two days later. It's a 62-unit building developed by The Drake Group, a firm founded in Glenview in 1998, which means even the newest address on this list has roots in the same village it's redeveloping.
None of these businesses are guessing about Glenview. Spiro's has 60 years of customer memory to protect. The Bagel is betting an 81-year-old owner's reputation on the idea that people still remember a name from Old Orchard. The Foxtail chose the one building in town that comes with a founding date built into the walls. Add it up and downtown Glenview's restaurant boom looks less like a market discovering a suburb and more like a neighborhood reassembling the version of itself people already loved, just a few blocks over and a little more walkable than before.
If you're watching all this activity downtown and wondering what it might mean down the road for a home you own nearby, or one you've had your eye on, that's a conversation worth having with someone who's been tracking this corner as closely as its regulars have. Anne Hardy has spent years watching Glenview change block by block, and she's glad to talk through what any of it means for you. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready.
