Plaza del Lago’s Next Act: Can a North Shore Icon Pull Off a Luxury Repositioning?

Plaza del Lago, a historic, open-air center in Wilmette, Illinois, sits in one of the Midwest’s most affluent trade areas, yet has long operated with a convenience-forward mid-market tenant mix led by Jewel-Osco (owned by Albertsons) and CVS. Its Spanish Revival architecture and lakefront setting give it rare potential as a boutique “village” environment, and its current redevelopment aims to fully unlock that potential by introducing a luxury retail lineup more commonly found in premier urban districts. This creates an unusually high-stakes balancing act: elevating a legacy convenience center into a premium experience destination while preserving the anchors that sustain its everyday relevance. Wilmette’s underlying fundamentals help explain why this repositioning is even on the table. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Wilmette’s median household income was $192,300 in 2023, providing an attractive trade area of affluent consumers to draw from.

Plaza del Lago wasn’t designed as a typical suburban shopping center. It originated in 1928 as Spanish Court, one of the earliest automobile-oriented open-air retail developments in the United States, designed by architect Edwin Hill Clark.
Its distinctive Mediterranean-style façades and intimate pedestrian passages gave it a character closer to a European village than a commercial strip. In the 1960s, the property evolved into Plaza del Lago, modernizing its format and introducing the convenience elements that define it today. When the former theater site ultimately became a Jewel-Osco supermarket, it cemented the center’s role as a high-frequency shopping destination that was functional, familiar, and embedded in community routines.

Understanding this legacy is essential: Plaza del Lago has always been a blend of architectural charm and everyday utility, a duality that shapes both its opportunities and challenges. In 2022, WS Development acquired Plaza del Lago with a clear goal: reposition it as a sophisticated, design-forward retail environment that still respects its historical significance. It’s an attempt to create a curated luxury village, rooted in history but reimagined for contemporary shopping behaviors.

The center is now partially open with a set of premium and luxury brands that represent a significant merchandising pivot, including:

• LoveShackFancy
• Jenni Kayne
• Veronica Beard
• James Perse
• rag & bone
• Oscar de la Renta
• Space 519, a Gold Coast curated retail concept

But the marquee announcement is that Hermès will be opening a two-story, approximately 8,000-square-foot boutique slated for 2026.

Few suburban centers in the U.S., let alone in the Midwest, are anchored simultaneously by a mainstream grocer and a global luxury fashion house. The contrast is striking, and the execution will determine whether it feels eclectic or incoherent.

Jewel-Osco and CVS are long-standing tenants that contribute meaningfully to Plaza del Lago’s economic stability. They generate daily-use traffic and create predictable shopping rhythms that independent boutiques could never replicate.

But from a brand and experience standpoint, they present challenges:

Why They Work

• High-frequency trips support the center’s baseline traffic.
• Everyday relevance keeps Plaza del Lago top-of-mind for Wilmette residents.
• Stabilizing rent base helps fund and justify investment during the multi-year repositioning.

Why They Don’t

• Their value-focused, efficiency-first operating models contrast sharply with the slower-paced, high-touch experience luxury retailers depend on.
• Visual, operational, and circulation patterns associated with grocery and pharmacy retail can dilute the aspirational tone WS Development is aiming to create.
• They attract a broader, more utilitarian shopper base rather than the niche, intent-driven customers that luxury retailers target.

This is also an inflection point for legacy tenants Jewel-Osco and CVS. As the tenant mix elevates, Jewel-Osco and CVS have a critical opportunity to refresh their storefronts and front-of-house experience, so they feel consistent with the center’s new tone. CVS, for example, has operated at Plaza Del Lago for over a decade, so a modernization would be both timely and strategically aligned with the redevelopment.

This is the fundamental dynamic that makes Plaza del Lago so strategically fascinating: it’s not a question of whether luxury can work on the North Shore—it clearly can. The question is whether luxury and necessity can coexist in a way that elevates one without undermining the other.

Even in its partially open state, parking at Plaza del Lago is challenging. This is significant because luxury shoppers often have low tolerance for inconvenience or friction at the arrival moment. As Hermès and other high-traffic brands open, parking could become the single most influential factor determining whether the repositioning feels premium or simply congested.

1. Create Clear Districting Within the Center

Luxury tenants need a visually and experientially distinct zone —one that feels insulated from the operational realities of grocery and pharmacy retail.

2. Treat Operations as a Branding Tool

Cleanliness, landscaping, traffic flow, loading practices, and lighting become part of the luxury value proposition.

3. Curate “Bridge” Tenants to Smooth the High-Low Contrast

Elevated food, wellness, home, and lifestyle concepts can serve as connective tissue between necessity and luxury, creating a seamless shopper journey.

4. Redesign Arrival and Parking as a High-Priority Experience

Strong signage, circulation logic, designated parking areas, active traffic management, and convenience-forward solutions will be essential as the center reaches full tenancy.

Outlook: High Potential, High Stakes

Plaza del Lago has everything a successful luxury repositioning requires:

• a deeply affluent trade area
• a distinctive architectural environment
• a compelling and ambitious tenant mix
• a developer with a track record of building experiential destinations

But its success will hinge on execution, not ambition. Luxury and convenience can coexist, but only if the experience is intentionally choreographed at every touchpoint, from parking to placemaking to tenant adjacency.

If WS Development threads this needle, Plaza del Lago could emerge as one of the most unique and charming luxury retail destinations in the Midwest. If not, it risks becoming two disconnected retail experiences sharing the same increasingly strained parking field.

In retail, the arrival moment often sets the tone—and in Plaza del Lago’s next chapter, that moment may be the difference between a thriving luxury village and a missed opportunity.

Plaza del Lago has always been a bit of a contradiction: It’s intimate but prominent, historic but commercial, local but destination-worthy. And now it’s about to become something even more unusual: a luxury-leaning, curated retail “village” in one of the most affluent pockets of the Chicago region, anchored by two legacy tenants—Jewel-Osco and CVS—that drive traffic but don’t naturally match the premium shopping experience the rest of the property is being rebuilt to deliver. That tension is exactly what makes this redevelopment worth watching.