Anyone who drives the corner of East State and Walnut has clocked it by now: the rooftop patio at The Bricks, sitting empty above a corner that otherwise stays busy. The planters are up. The grease trap has been installed since construction. What hasn't been there, through a village-wide grand opening, two full retail rosters, and one very memorable sandwich shop launch, is a restaurant.
That changed this spring. In May, the ownership signed a lease on the space, four years after the building first opened its doors. Nobody outside the building has confirmed what's moving in, but Cherry Valley has already done the detective work.
How Long "Almost Open" Actually Lasted
The Bricks occupies the old Acme Screw and Die complex, a set of buildings on East State and Walnut that date back to 1918. Beth Schroeder and her family bought the property in early 2021 and spent roughly a year and a half turning it into a mixed-use development: retail suites, a 6,500-square-foot event venue, and a standalone restaurant space with its own patio and rooftop bar.
The venue held its public opening in July 2022, backed by more than $3 million in investment. By that point the event space was booking weddings and the retail suites were filling with tenants like Savvy Event Co. and Citrine Creative Beauty Company. The restaurant space was different. It stayed listed, then stayed listed again. A 2023 write-up on the project still described three retail spaces open for lease, including the restaurant. A commercial listing as recent as last year showed the same suite, unclaimed, its 4,389 square feet of kitchen and dining room sitting next to a 1,200-square-foot rooftop patio that had never served a customer.
That's not a story about a stalled project. It's a story about one piece of a project that needed something the rest of the building didn't.
Why the Small Suites Filled and the Big One Didn't
Every other space at The Bricks opened to a tenant who could start small. A florist. A coffee shop. A hair salon. A photographer. In 2023, a 24-year-old Cherry Valley resident named Adrian Martinez, who'd worked at Portillo's, Beefaroo, and TGI Friday's, opened The Chef's Sandwich in one of the retail suites. That's the kind of first business a shared retail corridor is built for: low overhead, a simple menu, room to grow into the space.
A full restaurant with a rooftop bar is a different commitment. Someone has to staff a kitchen big enough to serve a sit-down dining room and a rooftop deck at the same time, in a village where the daytime foot traffic is still built mostly around the smaller shops next door. Tori Schroeder, who manages the venue, said as much back when the retail suites were filling and the restaurant slot was still open, telling a local outlet she wanted to see that space occupied and the event venue booked three times a week. That's someone inside the building naming the gap herself: the smaller storefronts could open on faith. The anchor space needed proof that people were already coming downtown before anyone would take the financial risk of leasing it.
The four years weren't dead time. They were the retail suites building the foot traffic the restaurant space needed before a serious operator would sign for it.
What the Clues Point To
The lease itself came with no name, no menu, and no opening date attached. What came instead was a trail of hints the community has been piecing together since the announcement post went up. Commenters noticed a response acknowledging that an earlier rumor "wasn't too far off." Others pointed to the timing, an announcement that landed close to Cinco de Mayo, and to a specific closed restaurant, Los Panchos in Sycamore, as a possible connection. None of it is confirmed. All of it points the same direction: a Mexican restaurant with a rooftop patio, the kind of margaritas-and-tacos-with-a-view spot that a lot of longtime residents have said out loud they'd show up for.
Until an operator confirms a name, that's speculation dressed up as pattern recognition. But it's informed speculation, built on watching this one building for four years.
What Downtown Already Has, and What It's Missing
Cherry Valley isn't short on places to eat. Salamone's Cherry Valley has built a loyal following as a family-owned Italian spot. Cherry Valley Cafe on East State Street runs the Friday fish fry and serves breakfast all day, the kind of place where regulars know the server by name. My Cafè Amorè handles dessert and coffee with a menu that rotates through things like funnel cake lattes. None of that is missing.
What the village hasn't had is a bar-forward restaurant built around an evening crowd and a rooftop view of downtown. Salamone's and the Cafe are dinner and daytime destinations. Nothing in Cherry Valley right now is designed as a place to end up after 8 p.m. on a Friday with a drink in hand. That's the category this space was built for from the start, and it's the reason its vacancy mattered more than an empty storefront usually would. A florist closing and reopening doesn't change what a Friday night in Cherry Valley looks like. A rooftop bar opening does.
What to Watch, and What's Already Running While You Wait
The Bricks has a history of using its own Cherry Valley Market events to make announcements and give tours, going back to the soft opening in 2022. If there's a pattern to watch, that's it: the next market date is likely to carry more news than a random Tuesday post.
In the meantime, the rest of the village keeps its usual rhythm. Baumann Park, right off State Street, has its 1.3-mile loop trail around the lake and a spot for casual panfish and bass anglers. Oak Ridge Forest Preserve, a few minutes out, connects to about 5.5 miles of trail that links up with the equestrian routes at Deer Run Forest Preserve, still one of the area's go-to spots for hiking and horseback riding. Neither of those is waiting on a lease to sign. They're already what a Saturday in Cherry Valley looks like, restaurant or no restaurant.
The four-year wait for that rooftop deck wasn't a sign nothing was happening in Cherry Valley. It was the opposite: a village small enough that one restaurant space had to wait for the rest of downtown to prove itself first. Now that it has, what opens next on that rooftop will say something about what this village has become, not just what's for dinner.
If you're watching Cherry Valley for reasons that go beyond where to eat this weekend, whether that's timing a move, sizing up a listing, or just keeping an eye on where the village is headed, Popula Properties tracks this market from the ground level. Reach out when you're ready to talk about what's next for your own address in Cherry Valley.
