In Streeterville, the Big Projects Are Still Fenced. The Fall Calendar Isn't.
Streeterville's three largest public projects all moved forward in the last two months. None of them can be visited this year. The DuSable statue now has a sculptor, the first tower at 400 Lake Shore Drive has started leasing, and Northwestern Medicine's Erie Street tower has City Council approval. Each one is still behind a construction fence, with a finish date of 2027 or later.
What did open this fall sits inside older rooms. One is a jewelry flagship in a landmarked 1885 mansion on Ontario Street. Others are museum shows scheduled into next summer and a holiday festival inside Navy Pier's Festival Hall. Until the east edge is finished, these older buildings are where the new things are.
Here is each site's latest public timeline, in the order it is due to finish:
The three are linked. The park is going ahead now largely because of the tower next door, and the tower's public walkway is what connects the park to the rest of the neighborhood.
The DuSable Park site sits on a small peninsula east of DuSable Lake Shore Drive. The park has been planned since 1987, when Mayor Harold Washington set the site aside in honor of Jean Baptiste Point DuSable. According to Block Club Chicago, it finally moved forward with help from 400 N. Lake Shore Drive, the residential project on the former Chicago Spire site. Developer Related Midwest is contributing $10 million toward the park.
The most recent news came on August 22, at the annual wreath-laying ceremony at Pioneer Court, 401 N. Michigan Ave., hosted by the DuSable Heritage Association. There, the Park District named sculptor Branly Cadet and architect Rodney Leon to create a full-body bronze statue of DuSable. The statue is to be unveiled when the park opens. The commission opened in March 2026 and gave priority to Haitian artists. Cadet's past work includes the Ark of Return at the United Nations, ARISE at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, and the Jackie Robinson memorial at Dodger Stadium.
The design team is Ross Barney Architects and Brook Architecture. Their plan runs a boardwalk around the edge of the peninsula and plants wetland and prairie native to Illinois. According to Ross Barney, the planting is meant to show the landscape DuSable and Kitihawa likely found when they arrived around 1778. The Park District's site plan also includes:
People will be able to reach the park from the Lakefront Trail, an extended Riverwalk and a dedicated bus stop. A second artwork is planned through the city's Native Voices program, by Northern Chumash artist Leah Mata Fragua and Jemez Pueblo artist Cliff Fragua. It is expected to be installed in summer 2027 and unveiled in fall 2027. For now, the Park District's own page for the park still lists it as closed.
To get from the park to the rest of Streeterville, people will use Founders Way. Related describes it as a landscaped walkway that extends the Chicago Riverwalk under Lake Shore Drive, connecting it to the Lakefront Trail and DuSable Park. It is part of 4.5 acres of open space at 400 Lake Shore Drive, along with a public plaza with art installations.
The North Tower stands 72 stories and 857 feet, with 635 rental apartments. The Sun-Times reported in August that exterior work on the first tower was finished. At street level, Hexe Coffee Co. is slated for 458 E. North Water St., with a rear patio facing the Ogden Slip. Neither the cafe nor Founders Way has a public opening date yet. The only published date for the project is the tower's March 2027 delivery.
The third fenced site sits a few blocks west. Northwestern Medicine's new hospital tower will fill the block bounded by Huron, McClurg Court, Erie and Fairbanks Court. This is the former Lakeside VA hospital site, where the old tower came down in 2009. Crews have already begun removing the VA building's basement.
The design is by Perkins&Will: 24 stories, 427 feet and 1.2 million square feet. At street level, the plans call for the following:
Bridges on the second floor will connect to Feinberg Pavilion and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. A fourth-floor rooftop garden will be open to patients, staff and visitors. Power Construction and UJAMAA Construction will build the $1.3 billion project. With main construction starting in spring 2027 and completion planned for 2031, this block will be an active site for years.
While the east edge waits on concrete, the biggest opening of the season moved into one of the neighborhood's oldest buildings. Local Eclectic, the Chicago jewelry brand that had sold only online since 2013, opened its first store on Thursday, September 3. The store is inside a renovated mansion at 212 E. Ontario St.
The house has 13,000 square feet. It was built in 1885 and designed by the Chicago firm Burling & Whitehouse, on land once owned by the estate of William B. Ogden, Chicago's first mayor. It had been vacant for 20 years before founder Alexis Nido-Russo bought it. She told Block Club she had spent about two years looking for a West Loop storefront. With rents of $90 to $100 a square foot plus build-out costs, she decided buying made more sense.
The gut renovation of the landmarked house took two and a half years. It turned up the original entryway mosaic, a fireplace and mantel hidden behind a wall, and old newspapers tucked inside the structure. The ground floor has three rooms:
The portrait painter George Peter Alexander Healy lived in the house in his last years. Nido-Russo found and restored his painting "Girl With Blue Bonnet" and hung it across from a modern version she commissioned from artist Sebastian Johnson.
The cafe is still on its way. It will serve a custom Metric coffee blend, wine and pastries, along with charcuterie, tinned fish, caviar and cocktails, under a hand-painted mural by French artist Philippine de Richemont. It will not allow laptops, and outdoor seating is planned for next year. As of WTTW's September 21 roundup, it was still described as opening soon. The store is open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
A few blocks north, the Museum of Contemporary Art has three exhibitions open at once, and each runs well past the holidays.
| Exhibition | Dates | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Kenzi Shiokava | June 27, 2026 – January 31, 2027 | The artist's first solo museum show, with more than 50 sculptures made from the 1970s through the 2010s |
| From the Center: Looking at Lucy Lippard | August 1, 2026 – July 11, 2027 | Spread across the stairwell galleries, tracing Lippard's influence on contemporary art and activism |
| Slow Dance | September 12, 2026 – March 14, 2027 | Six artists using performance and stillness to look at the pressure to be productive and always performing |
Shiokava closes first, at the end of January. Lippard stays up through next July, which could see the Native Voices artwork at DuSable Park close to installation.
Navy Pier's late-fall calendar is mostly under a roof. Slightly Spooky October runs on October 17, 24 and 31 and November 1, with indoor trick-or-treating on Halloween. At the Chicago Children's Museum, the Fall Castle and Spider Seek-and-Find exhibits run through November 10. Wintrust Winter WonderFest returns to Festival Hall from November 27, 2026 through January 3, 2027. It will be closed to the general public November 30 through December 2 for pre-booked groups.
Outdoors, the Park District is preparing repairs on the Lakefront Trail. Its September 14 update describes patching, seal-coating, new trail graphics and concrete edge repairs, to be done one section at a time from south to north over several months. DuSable Park and Founders Way will both connect to this trail once they open.
If you own in one of the buildings that face these sites, the 2027 and 2031 dates will shape how your home is presented when the time comes to sell. Lissa Weinstein follows each project closely across the Gold Coast and Streeterville and is glad to talk through what they mean for your address. Request a confidential consultation.
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