Mokena’s main commercial corridors are gearing up for a serious glow-up along LaGrange Road and Meridian Centre. On deck: a new Lakeside Bank branch, a four-story Staybridge Suites hotel, fresh dining options including Hawaiian Bros Island Grill and Crisp & Green, and a tap house with a built-in food-truck park called Emerald Social. Village meeting packets and developer plans show the projects moving through public review this spring. If everything clears the final hurdles, the lineup would bring new hotel rooms, drive-through banking, and a wider mix of restaurants to the village’s busiest strips.
Where the proposals showed up
The requests have been formally filed and taken up at recent Village Board meetings. According to the Village of Mokena, the Lakeside Bank and Lux Hospitality Staybridge Suites proposals were listed for review at the Feb. 23 Board meeting. Trustees saw the filings as special-use and planned unit development amendment requests, which now move into the more detailed site-plan and permitting stages.
What’s planned
Developers’ filings and press materials spell out the scope. Lakeside Bank is planned as a two-story, roughly 8,400-square-foot branch with three drive-through lanes. Lux Hospitality, a team of Sunny Patel, Shailesh Patel, and Amitabh Shah working with InterContinental Hotels Group and Trinity 19100 Land Development, has proposed a four-story Staybridge Suites with about 96 guest rooms and amenities that include an indoor pool and fitness center, according to Daily Southtown.
The retail cluster would feature a 3,636-square-foot multitenant building along LaGrange Road to house Hawaiian Bros Island Grill and Crisp & Green. Rounding out the slate, developers are pitching Emerald Social as a 9,882-square-foot tap house with an outdoor patio, stage, and an on-site food-truck park. Emerald Social describes the concept as a community-focused tap house built around local trucks, events and family-friendly seating.
Why it matters
Village leaders and applicants are framing the projects as part of a broader push to strengthen LaGrange Road and the 191st Street commercial spine, pull together scattered retail sites and bulk up the local tax base. That strategy, focused on denser and more mixed-use infill along major corridors, tracks with how the village describes land-use and corridor planning in its long-range documents. The village’s planning materials lay out corridor concept plans and implementation tools that help decide where retail, hotels and mixed commercial uses fit best, and staff say these current filings will help shape an updated comprehensive plan.
Next steps and public input
Most of the proposals are now working through final site-plan review, permitting and engineering checks, and construction has been reported to have started at the bank site. As reported by Daily Southtown, residents can weigh in on the comprehensive-plan update through the village’s public portal at PlanMokena.org. Current timelines call for phased work over the coming months as approvals wrap up and utility and site construction roll out.
