This weekend, Wells Street turns into a beer garden. Old Town Oktoberfest runs Friday through Sunday, September 18 to 20, its second year after a debut that convinced the Old Town Merchants & Residents Association to bring it back bigger. There will be bratwurst, a stein-holding contest, and a crowd spilling across the same stretch that hosts the Wells Street Art Festival every June. If you live here, you already know this. The flyers have been up for a month.
Beyond the festival, another Old Town story is unfolding: the building at 1639 N. Wells Street, empty since 2018, finally has a tenant. Whole Foods signed a lease there this month. The lease is one sign of how Old Town is changing, though the store's opening timeline remains uncertain.
The corner that sat empty longer than some residents have lived here
Treasure Island anchored 1639 N. Wells for decades before the chain collapsed in 2018. Julia Child once called it "America's most European supermarket," which tells you what kind of store this neighborhood is used to having on its main commercial strip. Since the closure, the 44,000-square-foot building has sat vacant. Eight years is long enough that plenty of current Old Town residents moved in after the doors already closed and only know the space as the dark storefront they pass on the way to the L.
Second Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins announced the Whole Foods lease in his weekly newsletter, calling the grocer "an established operator with the capacity to serve the neighborhood for the long term." A Yahoo News report quoted Ray Clark, president of the Old Town Triangle Association, saying residents have "consistently emphasized the importance of returning a full-service grocery store to this location." That is not a marketing line. It is what happens when a neighborhood goes almost a decade without a real grocery anchor on its own main street.
Nobody has an opening date. Hopkins' office says there is still work ahead. The site is part of a much larger project by developer Fern Hill, which won City Council approval in April to build a 349-unit apartment tower called Old Town Canvas at North Avenue and Wells, spanning six parcels in partnership with Moody Church. Whole Foods isn't just leasing a store. It's the grocery anchor for a construction project that hasn't broken ground on its residential piece yet. If you're picturing a fall grand opening, recalibrate. This is a multi-year build, not a lease-and-launch.
The grocery gap is actually two gaps, six years apart
Treasure Island wasn't Old Town's only grocery loss, and this is where the neighborhood's food access story gets more specific than most people realize. In April 2024, Dom's Kitchen & Market abruptly closed its Old Town store at 1233 N. Wells Street, just blocks from the old Treasure Island site, when parent company Outfox Hospitality collapsed and took sister chain Foxtrot Market down with it. That closure came six years after Treasure Island's, at a different address on the same street, and it's the reason Hopkins' office has described the neighborhood as facing a genuine grocery vacuum rather than a single unlucky vacancy.
The grocery story is more complicated than "Old Town lost a grocery store and now it's getting one back." The neighborhood lost two, at two different corners of Wells Street, over the better part of a decade, and only one of those corners has a resolution in progress. Worth knowing if you've been wondering why the closest full grocery run still feels like more of a production than it should.
What's actually filling in, block by block
While the big grocery story plays out over years, the smaller stuff has been moving faster, and it's the kind of turnover you notice on a Tuesday walk rather than in a press release.
- Winnie's opened last fall in the former Broken English Taco Pub space at 1400 N. Wells, right at the corner where the Wells Street Art Festival sets its stage every June.
- FARE, the healthy-food chain founded in 2010 by Kasia Bednarz and Britni de Leon, has been planning a location at 868 N. Wells, on the block near Petite Edith bistro, Layla & Ringo's cafe, and DJ's Great Room, with a debut targeted for sometime this past summer.
- Old Town Pour House, which opened on Wells Street in March 2012 with 90 craft beers on draft, the most of any bar in Chicago at the time, closed its original location and did not come back to Old Town at all. It resurfaced this summer in the former City Social space at 120 N. LaSalle downtown, run by the same ownership group, Bottleneck Management, that also operates South Branch Tavern & Grille and Sweetwater Tavern & Grille.
That last one is worth sitting with if you've wondered why the old Pour House space never reopened as a Pour House. It didn't relocate within the neighborhood; its new location is downtown. That contrast is one part of a changing commercial landscape on Wells Street, even as new tenants keep arriving on the same block.
What Oktoberfest weekend actually looks like
If you're planning your weekend around the festival, here's the schedule as posted by organizers:
| Day | Hours |
|---|---|
| Friday, Sept 18 | 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. |
| Saturday, Sept 19 | 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. |
| Sunday, Sept 20 | 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. |
Expect bratwurst, pretzels, German beer, live bands, a big-screen football setup, and the Masskrugstemmen stein-holding contest that's become the event's signature bit. It's a good weekend to be outside, with the festival offering a lively backdrop to longer-term changes on Wells Street.
Investors are already pricing in the difference
One more data point puts the grocery story in context. Essex Realty Group is currently marketing a mixed-use property at 1628-1630 N. Wells, a few doors north of Second City and directly across from the future Whole Foods site, as an investment opportunity. The listing broker described 50 feet of frontage on that block of Wells Street as a rare offering, citing historically limited supply and consistently strong demand. Whatever the grocery timeline turns out to be, the commercial market on this stretch is already treating the Whole Foods lease as a signal worth pricing into a sale.
The version of this story worth remembering
Oktoberfest will pack Wells Street for three days and then pack up. The empty storefront at 1639 N. Wells has been part of the daily scenery for eight years and is now attached to a construction timeline that could run another two or three. The block-level churn, Winnie's, FARE, the Pour House's permanent move downtown, is happening faster and will likely reshape what's actually open on a Tuesday night before the grocery question resolves. If you live in Old Town, the festival is one part of the fall story; the neighborhood's largest grocery change is still years out, while smaller changes are already underway. Both are worth keeping in mind as you make plans.
If you ever want a read on how any of this touches property values or timing on Wells Street specifically, Chloé Ifergan has been tracking Old Town block by block and is always up for a conversation, no pressure, no pitch, just a local perspective when you want one.
