Drive past 3333 W. Touhy on a Saturday afternoon and the parking lot reads like a photograph from a decade ago. Fencing along the McCormick side. A single sedan near the Kohl's entrance. Old Navy shoppers cutting an odd diagonal because the interior corridor no longer runs through. A mile up Lincoln, at Touhy, the story inverts. Fat Rosie's patio is full by 5. The Marriott shell is buttoned up and the porte-cochere is graded. A steady drip of residents walks in from the apartments above the restaurants and orders a second round.
That contrast is the story of the summer. For 35 years the retail and social center of Lincolnwood sat at Touhy and McCormick. This July it finishes migrating a mile north to Touhy and Lincoln, and the routines that used to end at the mall food court now end at a sidewalk table under a District 1860 awning.
The mall did not simply close. It is being taken apart in three phases, on a timeline the village has already published.