Village Crossing Has a New Owner. Here's What It Has Promised for Touhy Avenue So Far.

There used to be a two-story parking deck behind the movie theater at 7000 Carpenter Road. In May 2024 the Village of Skokie said demolition was underway and should be done by mid-June. The plan was a surface lot with a net gain of 200 trees across the property. The deck's second floor had been closed for a while before that, and Niles and Skokie had both approved the teardown because the structure was physically and functionally obsolete, according to the Village of Niles' Fall 2023 newsletter.

That project shows how Village Crossing changes, piece by piece around stores that stay open. The new owner's plans work the same way. The August 2026 sale leaves the anchors where they are and puts the money into the spaces between them.

What $122 Million Bought on Touhy Avenue

Harbert Management Corporation, an asset manager based in Birmingham, Alabama, closed on Village Crossing on Aug. 28, 2026. It paid $122 million, with Fairbourne Properties as its joint-venture partner, according to The Record North Shore. The seller was Chicago-based Nuveen. Fairbourne had managed the center for Nuveen and will keep managing it under the new ownership.

The Real Deal put the price at about $172 per square foot. It called the deal the largest Chicagoland retail sale since the Sullivan Center in the Loop sold for $147 million in 2016. The same report placed the sale inside Nuveen's shift toward grocery-anchored properties. Village Crossing has a Jewel-Osco, but Nuveen sold it anyway.

The financing explains more than the price does. Draper and Kramer arranged a $99.5 million acquisition loan for Fairbourne, and Shopping Center Business reported that part of it is set aside for tenant improvements and leasing commissions. Those two line items pay to build out storefronts and sign new tenants. The plan to fill space was funded from day one.

The Stores Staying Put

Harbert's acquisition announcement names Jewel-Osco, Best Buy, Dick's Sporting Goods, AMC Theatres, Barnes & Noble, PetSmart, Ulta and Michaels. It says several anchors recently signed long-term renewals and made material capital investments in their spaces. The announcement doesn't say which anchors renewed. Fairbourne's property page lists 69 retailers. Its key tenants include those eight plus Altitude Trampoline Park, Five Below and OfficeMax.

Harbert says the center draws about 6.8 million visits a year. The big boxes generate most of that traffic, and the renewals mean they aren't what's up for discussion. The changes will come in smaller units.

Two Occupancy Numbers, Nine Months Apart

The leasing figures are where the story gets specific. At the end of 2025, the TIAA Real Estate Account, the Nuveen-advised fund that owned the property, reported Village Crossing as 87.3% leased in its annual report for fiscal 2025. It valued the center at $122.5 million, almost exactly the eventual sale price. When the sale was reported in September 2026, The Real Deal said the center was 95% leased.

Applied to roughly 722,000 square feet, the gap matters. At 87.3% leased, about 92,000 square feet would have been open. At 95%, the open space falls to about 36,000 square feet. The two figures come from different reports at different times and may not measure leasing the same way, so they don't prove that 56,000 square feet was leased during 2026. Either way, the space left to fill is small next to the whole center. Small-shop leasing fits a remainder that size better than a new anchor would.

That matches what Harbert says it will do. Its plan is to lease the existing vacancies and improve the tenant mix with "small-shop retailers and restaurants favored by the local community," according to Patch. Todd Jordan, a managing director at the firm, told Patch the partners plan to "bring in tenants that further elevate the shopping experience for Village Crossing's surrounding community." As of this week, none of those incoming tenants has been named.

A Site That Has Been Rebuilt Before

The center's own history shows the same piece-by-piece pattern. The Skokie Newspaper Index has decades of Skokie Review coverage of the property:

Fairbourne gives 1989 as the year the center was completed. The Record reports that Nuveen combined what had been several separate shopping centers into the single Village Crossing that shoppers know today. The theater approved in 1999 now operates as an AMC. Each of these changes happened while the rest of the center stayed open.

The 1999 vacancy figure is worth setting next to today's. Village Crossing had 15% of its space empty then and recovered. It entered 2026 at 87.3% leased, with a slightly smaller share of empty space than in 1999, and reached a reported 95% by the time it sold. It has handled empty space before without a teardown.

The Promise List, Item by Item

Harbert's announcement describes physical upgrades in some detail, though it gives no dates. According to Patch, the work covers:

• Façades and roofs
• Architectural features
• Lighting
• Wayfinding
• Tenant signage
• Landscaping
• Sidewalks

Every item on that list is something a shopper sees between the car and the door. New signs and wayfinding change how people find stores in a center that grew out of several older ones. Lighting and sidewalks change the walk across a lot that already lost its parking deck. Landscaping builds on the 200-tree commitment from the 2024 demolition. None of these items moves a store, closes the theater or relocates the Jewel.

Two kinds of public signals will show when the work starts. Façade and signage work usually means applications and permits filed with the municipality. The center straddles the Skokie and Niles line, and both villages signed off on the deck demolition, so watch both boards' agendas. New leases will show up as storefront signage and opening announcements in the small-shop spaces before any change reaches the big boxes. Harbert's announcement doesn't give a construction calendar, and neither village has posted one tied to this sale.

What Changes for a Saturday Errand Run

This holiday season, the stores you shop on Touhy are the same ones as last year. The new owner's stated plan, its loan terms and its leasing math all point to the smaller spaces as where change will show up first: new restaurants and local-scale shops in storefronts that sit empty now, then new signs, lighting and sidewalks connecting them to the anchors. Two numbers set the scale. The open space left to fill is about 36,000 square feet if the September figure holds, out of a center of about 722,000.

Village Crossing sits within easy reach of many Skokie homes, and changes to a center this size are worth following if you own nearby. If you're near Touhy and want to know where your home stands as Village Crossing changes, Victoria Stein can walk you through it. Request a Home Valuation, and we'll look at your street together.