Walk the four blocks from the Water Tower east along Burlington Avenue on a Wednesday evening in August, and the block looks, for now, mostly the way it has all summer. Bensidoun's brightly canopied French Market runs on Hillgrove in front of Tower Green from 4 to 7 pm, families cut through toward Thomas Ford Memorial Library, and two storefronts on Burlington sit quiet behind paper. By late October those two storefronts are expected to be open, both serving Italian, both operated by names locals already know. That is the story of downtown this fall.
The block, in one table
Two closings, two rebuilds, one summer market winding down. Here is where things stand as of early August.
| Address | What's there now | What's coming | Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| 821 Burlington Ave. | Vacant since early January (former Salerno's Pizzeria) | Alano Ristorante, from Hillgrove Tap owner Chris Elsey | Late October 2026 |
| 909 Burlington Ave. | Vacant (former Hash Stacks Café & Market, closed Nov 2022) | Petite Vie, from Paul Virant | Build-out in progress |
| 4471 Lawn Ave. | Ella's Italian Pub | Open | — |
| Hillgrove Ave., in front of Tower Green | Bensidoun French Market, Wed 4–7 pm | Final weeks of the season | Runs through August |
Two Italian openings on the same avenue, from two operators with very different track records, is not a coincidence anyone in town should read as random. It is a bet that downtown Western Springs can support a wider bandwidth of Italian than it has in years.
821 Burlington: Chris Elsey's second act in town
The Salerno's Pizzeria that occupied 821 Burlington closed in early January, leaving one of the more visible storefronts on the block dark for most of 2026. In late July, Patch reported that Chris Elsey, the owner of Hillgrove Tap in Western Springs and Tinley Park, is planning to open Alano Ristorante in that space with a late-October target.
The details in Elsey's liquor license application are the interesting part. He described Alano as an "elegant Italian restaurant," with a price point of roughly $30 to $45 per person including a drink, and a menu built around appetizers, salads, pastas, pizza, fish, chicken, and steaks. The bar side is planned around specialized spirits, classic cocktails, wine, and beer. Elsey was previously the managing partner of Francesca's, the suburban chain with locations in Elmhurst and Naperville, so the format he is describing is not experimental for him. It is a version of a room he has run before, dropped into a village that has not had a mid-priced sit-down Italian dinner in that specific slot since Salerno's.
For residents, the practical read is this. Hillgrove Tap will remain what it is, an American bar-and-burgers room with a family-friendly bench. Alano is being positioned two blocks away as its dressier sibling, closer to date-night than to Tuesday-with-the-kids. Same operator, deliberately different room.
909 Burlington: Paul Virant returns, smaller
The second opening is on the same avenue and comes from a very different resume. Paul Virant, the chef who ran Vie at 4471 Lawn Ave. for nineteen years before it closed, is opening Petite Vie at 909 Burlington in the space that Hash Stacks Café & Market vacated in November 2022. Village spokeswoman Selmin Cicek confirmed to Patch that Western Springs approved an interior demolition permit for Petite Vie last December and a build-out permit shortly after. Virant also runs Vistro Prime in Hinsdale and Gaijin in Chicago, so this is the smaller, hometown project inside a larger portfolio.
The old Vie space at 4471 Lawn Ave. did not stay vacant long. Ella's Italian Pub, part of the Ella's and Gia Mia group with locations in Elmhurst, Downers Grove, Wheaton, Geneva, and Naperville, took over that address and has been open. So the "Italian" line on the block has effectively tripled since Vie closed: Ella's on Lawn, Alano on Burlington, Petite Vie on Burlington.
The question a resident is entitled to ask is whether the market supports three Italian dining rooms within a five-minute walk. The answer built into the openings is that these are three different rooms. Ella's is a pub with a broad wine list. Alano is a $30–$45 per-person sit-down. Petite Vie, given the Virant reputation and the smaller footprint, will almost certainly read as the tasting-menu-adjacent room of the three. Three price points, three moods, one avenue.
The French Market gap
Between now and Alano's late-October opening, the downtown rhythm most residents actually plan around is Wednesday afternoons. Bensidoun's French Market runs Wednesdays from 4 to 7 pm on Hillgrove Avenue in front of the Water Tower, between Lawn and Grand, and the season ends in August. Produce, meat, eggs, coffee, olive oil, baked goods, flowers, and the occasional busker.
A practical detail worth pinning: the Village website confirms the market season is May through August, and Village-hosted paired activities like bounce houses and character visits often overlap with the market on the Tower Green side. Wednesdays after August fold back into a normal downtown week.
That timing is worth thinking about because it lines up almost exactly with the Alano and Petite Vie build-out windows. The market ends. The two Burlington storefronts spend September in interior work. October brings the ribbon cuttings. From a resident's calendar, the transition from "market season" to "new-restaurant season" is essentially seamless in one direction: your Wednesday dinner plan moves twenty feet, from a canopy on Hillgrove to a dining room on Burlington.
A Wednesday-to-Saturday loop that actually works this fall
If you already live here, the point of a post like this is not to sell you on downtown. You already walk it. But the useful frame is how the sequencing changes. A rough map for the next twelve weeks:
- August Wednesdays. French Market 4 to 7 pm on Hillgrove in front of Tower Green. If you're feeding a family, Beach Avenue BBQ and Frosty Dog have been rotating through the market this summer, and pre-purchased Gathering-on-the-Green style wristbands are no longer relevant until next June.
- September. Market is done. Ella's on Lawn absorbs the mid-week Italian demand. Hillgrove Tap picks up the casual burger-and-a-beer bench. Two storefronts on Burlington are papered over. Not a lot new to report on the block itself, which is the honest read.
- Early to mid-October. Watch for permit sign changes on 821 Burlington. When the front paper comes down, opening is close.
- Late October. Alano's target opening. Petite Vie's timing is less specific in the public record, so treat that one as "watch for signage."
- All of it, quietly. IDOT's 55th Street project resurfacing and landscaping work wraps up this fall, so the drive to and from the block gets easier at roughly the same moment the two restaurants open.
The one thing to keep an eye on
Two Italian openings inside a hundred-yard stretch will produce noise on the block. Curbside pickup, valet questions, and parking pressure on Burlington in the first sixty days after either opening are the reasonable predictions. Neither restaurant sits directly on the Tower Green, which helps the market side, but both sit inside the same two-block downtown parking envelope. If you use that block on Wednesday evenings now, the practical adjustment is a season away, not a year.
None of this changes what makes downtown Western Springs feel the way it does. The Water Tower still anchors the north end of the walk, Thomas Ford Memorial Library still runs its community concert series, and the block between Lawn and Grand still feels village-scaled. What changes is that by the first cold Saturday of November, two of the most-watched storefronts on Burlington will be lit up again, and both will be serving pasta.
For homeowners in Western Springs who like knowing what is actually changing on the block before it changes, that is worth a walk down Burlington this month. And when you are ready to think about what your home is worth in a downtown that keeps drawing operators like Elsey and Virant back, the team at Shanon Tully is a good conversation to have. Start with a free home valuation.
