Northbrook Court Redevelopment: Housing First, Retail Later

Drive past Northbrook Court on a weekday afternoon and the parking lot tells the real story before any sign does. Gates are down over storefronts that used to have lines. Tiffany & Co. and Tommy Bahama still hold their spots near Neiman Marcus, but the corridors between them have the kind of quiet a two-level regional mall was never built to hold. So when word gets around that the village finally approved a path forward for the 100-acre site on Lake Cook Road, the natural assumption is that new stores are on the way.

They are not. Not first, and maybe not for a long while.

Housing first, retail later, maybe much later

In March 2025, the Village of Northbrook approved a request from Brookfield Properties, the mall's owner since 1995, to build the residential portion of the redevelopment before touching the commercial side. Village President Kathryn Ciesla told NBC Chicago that the sequencing change gives Brookfield room to respond to current market conditions and build momentum for the larger project. In plain terms: the apartments, row houses and townhomes on the west side of the property are the part a national real estate investment trust can pencil out right now. The open-air shops and restaurants originally planned for the northeast corner, above where Neiman Marcus and the old Lord & Taylor space sit, are the part that still depends on finding retail tenants willing to sign leases for a mall that had shrunk to roughly two dozen stores as of last year's tenant count.

That distinction matters if you live near the property and have been watching for a groundbreaking. The earliest estimate floated for breaking ground on the housing phase was summer 2026, and as of early this year the site still looked essentially the same as when Brookfield first unveiled the $750 million plan back in April 2023. That summer window has now come and gone without any public confirmation that shovels are in the ground, which is its own kind of answer. Even once housing construction visibly starts, that is not the same signal as new stores opening.

Who's still in the building, and who left in 2025

The tenant math changed fast last year. Apple announced its Northbrook Court closure in February 2025 and shut the store by late April, ending a run of roughly two decades. Lululemon, Sephora, Forever 21, Auntie Anne's and Louis Vuitton all closed within the same stretch, and the Lego Store relocated to Old Orchard in December.

What's left, as of the most recent tenant accounting:

The mall hasn't had a department store anchor pulling foot traffic since Macy's closed in 2019 and was later demolished. What remains functions less like a shopping center and more like a scattered collection of tenants waiting to see what happens next door.

The 50 percent threshold nobody mentions

Here's the detail that explains why nobody should expect a fast retail turnaround even after the housing phase wraps. Under the amended agreement, the tax increment financing and sales tax rebates that make the commercial redevelopment financially workable for Brookfield only activate once half of the planned retail space is leased, according to reporting from CRE Daily.

"The agreement protects taxpayers by requiring 50% of retail to be leased before incentives are accessed." — Northbrook Village President Kathryn Ciesla

That's a chicken-and-egg problem built into the deal on purpose. Brookfield needs tenants committed before the village hands over the financial support that typically helps fund the buildout those tenants would occupy. It's a reasonable way to keep public money from subsidizing empty storefronts twice. It also means the commercial phase has no fixed date, because it depends on retailers deciding to sign before there's much built to show them.

For context on what the mall used to mean to the village budget: at the 2023 hearings that approved the original agreement, Northbrook Court was still generating about $5 million a year in property taxes despite a 20 percent vacancy rate and a 20 percent drop in sales-tax contributions between 2012 and 2021, according to the Daily Herald's coverage of the plan commission vote. The mall was still the village's largest single commercial taxpayer even in decline. That's part of why the village kept negotiating instead of walking away, and why the sequencing compromise made sense for both sides even if it means a longer wait for shoppers.

Brookfield's playbook isn't specific to Northbrook

It helps to know that Northbrook Court isn't a one-off experiment for its owner. Brookfield has described the project as part of a broader national strategy to reposition struggling malls into mixed-use properties, pointing to comparable work underway at San Francisco's Stonestown Galleria. The housing-first sequencing at Northbrook Court is a template being applied across a portfolio, not a bespoke fix designed around this particular stretch of Lake Cook Road. That's useful context if you're trying to guess timing based on local sentiment alone. The decisions driving the pace here are being made against a national balance sheet, not a neighborhood one.

Where Northbrook actually gathers while it waits

While the mall works through a financing structure with no fixed finish line, the parts of Northbrook people actually treat as the center of town have kept doing what they've always done, a few minutes away in the village's own downtown.

Northbrook Days wrapped its five-day run in downtown Northbrook on August 9, the latest edition of an event that's raised almost $4 million for community scholarships and grants since 1950 through the volunteer-run Northbrook Civic Foundation. Village Green Park, the small downtown green space with its gazebo and River Walk, hosts Little League Baseball games and Park Fest concerts as a matter of routine, not as a special promotion.

The next fixture on that calendar is the sixth annual Northbrook Brewfest, set for September 19 at Village Green Park, according to the Northbrook Park District's fall program announcement. Past editions have run food through Landmark Inn Bar & Grille and beer through Glenview-based Joseph Mullarkey Distributors, and the Wednesday farmers market downtown runs through October 14 this year.

None of that depends on a REIT's capital allocation decisions or a tenant-leasing threshold. It's funded by ticket sales, sponsorships and a park district budget, and it's been running in some form for decades. The contrast is the actual point here. Northbrook Court's future is genuinely uncertain and tied to forces well outside the village's control. Downtown Northbrook's calendar isn't uncertain at all, because it was never built around one landlord's balance sheet in the first place.

What this means if you live nearby

If you've been holding out hope that visible construction at Northbrook Court will mean new stores are close behind, it's worth resetting that expectation. What's approved to come first is housing, whenever that groundbreaking actually happens. The retail comeback, if and when it follows, is gated behind a leasing threshold that has no clock attached to it.

In the meantime, the version of Northbrook that shows up on a Saturday morning or a September evening isn't waiting on any of this. It's already downtown, and it has been the whole time.

For more on what living near this corridor actually looks like day to day, see our earlier look at downtown Northbrook and the area around Northbrook Court, or browse our full Northbrook neighborhood guide for a closer look at the village beyond the mall.

If you're weighing a move in or around Northbrook and want a read on how a corridor like this affects home values and long-term livability, The Shore Group knows this market block by block. Work With Us.