Walk east on Silver Spring Drive past Hollywood Boulevard this week and you'll pass an orange construction fence, a half-built parking lot, and a restaurant with a two-week-old awning. The fence and the awning are twelve feet apart. Nobody standing at either one seems bothered by the other.
That's the part of this summer worth paying attention to if you live in Whitefish Bay. The village's own construction calendar and a wave of new restaurant openings are happening on the same three blocks at the same time, and instead of one delaying the other, they're running in parallel. That's not a coincidence. It's a read on how much confidence this particular stretch of the North Shore commands right now, construction cones and all.
What's actually torn up, and where
The headline project is Sendik's. The grocer's Whitefish Bay store, a neighborhood fixture since the 1940s at 500 E. Silver Spring Drive, is getting an $8 to $10 million rebuild that third-generation co-owner Ted Balistreri has called the "finest grocery store in the state of Wisconsin." The village board approved the development agreement in October 2025 after nine public meetings and revisions from Sendik's that reflect the community's vision, including upgrades meant to make walking in the district safer and more inviting.
The construction isn't confined to one lot. Here's how the village has laid out the work this year:
| Segment | Construction window |
|---|---|
| Lake Drive | April 2026 – June 2026 |
| Silver Spring Drive | After July 13, 2026 – August 2026 |
| Consaul Place | July 2026 – August 2026 |
Work dates are subject to change based on contractor availability and weather impacts. As of this week, the Lake Drive segment should be behind you, but Silver Spring Drive and Consaul Place are both mid-project, which explains why the sidewalks in front of the shops you know best look different than they did in June.
The scope goes beyond the store itself. The project is funding nearly $925,000 in bike and pedestrian safety improvements, including medians, bump outs, and pedestrian lighting at key intersections, with $400,000 reserved for future enhancements, plus replacement of 850 feet of century-old water mains and 16 additional public parking stalls once the dust settles. The old building will come down once the new store opens, making way for a 119-space parking lot where the current store now sits.
Seven openings, one torn-up street
Here's the part that doesn't fit the usual construction-summer story. A run of new restaurants has opened along this same corridor over the past several months, not after the work wrapped, but squarely during it. A February 2026 roundup of new Whitefish Bay restaurants lists Cassis, El Batey, aya, Goldie's Brunch Boutique, Ann's Noodle, The Happy Place, Safadi Coffee, AM Social, and Kumi among the additions.
A few of those are worth knowing by name if you haven't tried them yet:
- El Batey brings a new Puerto Rican tapas and cocktail concept to the district.
- Safadi Coffee serves Palestinian food and coffee alongside traditional American drinks, with a Salted Cardamom Date Latte that regulars mention by name.
- Goldie's Brunch Boutique has built a following around a Friday night fish fry alongside its breakfast and lunch service.
- Forage Kitchen, a few doors down at 103 E. Silver Spring Drive, sits right at the corner of North Bay Ridge Avenue, in the middle of the district's foot traffic for events like the July 4th Parade and the Holiday Stroll.
None of these businesses waited for the barricades to come down before signing a lease. That's the tell. A restaurant group doesn't commit to a build-out on a street that's mid-construction unless it's confident the disruption is temporary and the foot traffic on the other side of it is worth the wait. The construction isn't a headwind these owners are working around. It's the reason the corridor is worth betting on in the first place, because a village that's willing to spend seven figures on sidewalks and water mains is a village that plans to keep investing in the same three blocks for a long time.
The old anchor, still standing
It's worth remembering that this stretch of Silver Spring Drive has absorbed reinvention before. The Bay Restaurant, one of the district's better-known gathering spots, occupies a building first constructed in 1955 as a liquor store for Clarence and Sylvia Schallert, back when the Schallerts held the first liquor license issued in the village's history. Seventy years and several storefronts later, it's still doing the same job the neighborhood asked it to do then: give people a reason to walk to Silver Spring Drive instead of driving somewhere else.
"This project builds upon the Sendik's legacy while delivering substantial infrastructure upgrades and improvements to our community, shaped through meaningful public engagement," Village President Kevin Buckley said when the board approved the redevelopment.
That's the pattern underneath all of this. The village isn't tearing down a piece of its identity to build something generic. It's rebuilding the same anchor, on the same corner, with the same name on the door, just larger and better equipped for the next several decades.
The calendar didn't slow down either
If the restaurant openings are the entrepreneurial half of this story, the civic calendar is the other half, and it's moving at its usual pace regardless of what's happening at street level.
The Whitefish Bay Farmers Market keeps its regular Saturday footprint at the corner of Silver Spring at Santa Monica, 325 E. Silver Spring Drive in the Aurora Parking lot, selling fresh and organic produce, meats, breads, flowers, honey, and more, construction fencing or not.
Bigger than that, Sounds of Summer returns to the same street on Saturday, August 15, from 6 to 10 p.m. This year's headliner is Milwaukee-area musician Steve Beguhn, familiar to local audiences from his run on NBC's The Voice and performances throughout southeastern Wisconsin. The event closes Silver Spring Drive between Hollywood Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard starting around 11 a.m. which is the same stretch currently under construction. If you're planning to go, walking or biking is genuinely the better call this year, not just the polite suggestion it usually is. Parking near the event can fill quickly, so allow extra time and look for legal street parking on surrounding blocks.
Neither the Farmers Market organizers nor the Civic Foundation rerouted their signature summer events around the construction schedule. They built the calendar as if the sidewalks would be ready, because the village's own timeline says they will be. That's a quieter vote of confidence than the restaurant openings, but it's the same vote.
What this means if you live here
If you've been avoiding the Sendik's end of the district because of the noise and the detours, you're not missing much by August's end. The Silver Spring Drive and Consaul Place work is scheduled to wrap this month, and the new store itself is slated to open in late summer 2026. The inconvenience has a visible expiration date attached to it, which is more than most construction projects can promise.
In the meantime, the smart move is the one several hundred people are about to make on August 15: bring a chair, walk instead of drive, and treat the whole stretch, cones and all, as the same neighborhood it's always been. The businesses opening into the middle of a construction zone have already made that bet. The village's own calendar says they're right to.
If you're watching this corridor because you're thinking about a move within Whitefish Bay, or wondering what a rebuilt business district might mean for values on the streets around it, that's exactly the kind of question Karen Larson spends her days answering for North Shore buyers and sellers. Let's Connect.
