A six-story, 256-unit apartment building could soon rise on the eastern half of Chase Plaza in Buffalo Grove, where an office building and a shuttered restaurant have sat for years alongside a grocery store that closed more than a decade ago. The plan, put forward jointly by UrbanStreet Group and Shorewood Development Group, would also demolish the plaza's outlot restaurant site to make room for a new speculative commercial building, and it now heads to scrutiny from the village's Planning and Zoning Commission.
The restaurant slated for demolition is The Buffalo, a longtime local restaurant and ice cream parlor known for its matzo ball soup that recently closed permanently, according to Daily Herald. In its place, the developers want to build a 6,000-square-foot spec-tenant building, per the same report. The apartment tower itself would replace the office building at 1140 Lake Cook Road and the eastern commercial space at Chase Plaza, which sits at 1160 West Lake Cook Road in Buffalo Grove, according to The Real Deal.
What's Planned for the New Building
The proposed complex would offer a mix of one-bedroom and two-bedroom market-rate units, according to The Real Deal. Amenities under consideration include a clubhouse, a resident lounge, a fitness center, an outdoor pool, and a fenced dog park, the Daily Herald reports. Parking would come from a three-story garage with 384 spaces, supplemented by 72 surface spots, per the same report.
Louis Schriber III, a Shorewood Development Group representative, and Bob Burk, UrbanStreet's managing partner, are both named in connection with the proposal, according to The Real Deal. The plan will go before the Buffalo Grove Village Board for review, with village officials set to weigh in at a board meeting, the outlet notes.
A Grocery Store That Sat Empty for 12 Years
This isn't the first phase of change at Chase Plaza. In January, the Buffalo Grove Village Board approved amendments to the site's planned unit development that will convert the long-vacant former Dominick's building into a 34,500-square-foot Club Studio fitness center and a 27,000-square-foot Sprouts Farmers Market, according to Journal & Topics. That grocery anchor had sat empty for 12 years following Dominick's 2014 closure, the outlet reports. The 6.28-acre parcel was owned by Albertsons/Dominick's Finer Foods LLC before Shorewood placed it under contract, according to the Village of Buffalo Grove.
The apartment proposal represents a second phase of the overhaul, with the remaining western commercial portion of the plaza set for a full exterior facade update — new storefronts, entrances, lighting, and signage — according to the Daily Herald. Village officials have tied the broader push to Buffalo Grove's 2018 Lake Cook Corridor Market Study and Plan, an 18-month planning initiative adopted that April to guide a 15- to 20-year revitalization of Lake-Cook Road into mixed-use centers, per Journal & Topics.
Developers' Other Buffalo Grove and Schaumburg Projects
UrbanStreet is also a partner on The Clove, Buffalo Grove's $150 million redevelopment of the 22-acre former Town Center site, which includes nearly 300 luxury apartment units known as The 250 Residences and commercial space anchored by a Whole Foods Market projected to open in 2027, according to Journal & Topics. The firm additionally plans to transform a former Motorola atrium in Schaumburg into an apartment complex that would bring around 300 units to the area, per The Real Deal, part of its District at Veridian project that includes 18 row houses connecting to D.R. Horton's Northgate at Veridian development. UrbanStreet secured $47 million in public TIF funding commitments from the Village of Schaumburg in July 2024 to support that project's infrastructure, according to a Daily Herald report shared on Facebook.
Shorewood, meanwhile, is building Bison Crossing in Buffalo Grove, a $100 million mixed-use project on the former 16-acre Rohrman auto dealership site on Dundee Road featuring 224 apartments and a 50,000-square-foot Tesla sales and service center, backed by $11 million in village TIF financing approved in January 2024, according to Shorewood Development Group. The developer also expanded its regional footprint in May by acquiring the razed 37.5-acre former Walgreens corporate headquarters campus along Lake-Cook Road in neighboring Deerfield for $13.1 million, with plans for a future mixed-use development, per The Real Deal.
