Trader Joe's Is Coming to Uptown, Eight Eleven Uptown Nears Its Top, and a Storied Campus Gets New Funding: Three Big Stories for Your Thursday
By Socialhood News · Uptown ·
Uptown neighbors, Thursday's news cycle is delivering a trio of updates that span grocery shopping, skyline-altering construction, and the long-awaited redevelopment of one of the neighborhood's most recognized institutional sites. Here's what you need to know.
**Trader Joe's Is Actually Coming to Uptown — On Montrose**
For years, Far North Siders have petitioned, wished, and lobbied for a Trader Joe's close to home — and the waiting is almost over. Back in late March, the company quietly acquired a permit to build out a store on Montrose Avenue in Uptown, making it official after months of neighborhood rumor. The Uptown location is one of as many as four new Trader Joe's stores announced for the Chicago area at that time, and it would be the third new Chicago location confirmed since October 2025 alone, joining planned stores in Logan Square and Fulton Market.
The Montrose Avenue storefront has a layered history that longtime neighbors will recognize. It was once Peter Rubi Plant Based Market, a Plainfield-based vegan grocer that opened there in September 2021. By January 2022, Plant X had acquired both the Uptown and Plainfield locations, rebranding the space as XMarket — a vegan grocer that eventually transitioned into a short-lived food hall before closing in late 2024. After sitting in commercial limbo, the space is now set to become the neighborhood grocery anchor that Uptown advocates have been pushing for across multiple failed attempts, including a Clark Street plan in Andersonville that fell through in 2023. The Uptown Trader Joe's, as Block Club Chicago noted, "would achieve a goal of many Far North Siders who have advocated for a Trader Joe's for years." No opening date has been announced, but with a permit now in hand, construction build-out is the next milestone to watch.
**Eight Eleven Uptown Is Nearly at Its Peak — 381 Apartments and a Treasure Island Are Coming**
On the construction front, one of Uptown's most ambitious towers is approaching a major milestone. Eight Eleven Uptown — the 27-story residential tower rising at 811 W. Agatite Avenue — was recently observed by Building Up Chicago to be very close to topping out, with construction crews working on the upper floors and the core reaching its full height. When it opens, the building will deliver 381 apartments and 36,000 square feet of retail space to the neighborhood, designed by Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture and co-developed by JDL Development and Harlem Irving Companies.
The retail component is particularly significant for daily life in the neighborhood: the building's opening will include a new Treasure Island grocery store. For a neighborhood that has long grappled with grocery access as a quality-of-life issue, having both a Treasure Island anchoring Eight Eleven Uptown and a Trader Joe's on Montrose Avenue in the pipeline at the same time represents a genuine turning point. At 381 units, Eight Eleven will also be one of the single largest residential additions to Uptown's housing stock in a generation, adding hundreds of new households to a corridor already seeing rapid change.
**New Funding Announced for the Immaculata Campus at Irving Park and Sheridan**
And for neighbors who have watched the imposing Immaculata High School campus at 640 W. Irving Park Road for signs of what comes next — there is fresh news. According to Chicago Build Expo, a new funding scheme has been announced for the upcoming redevelopment of the Immaculata campus. The site sits at one of Uptown's most prominent intersections, where Irving Park Road meets the Sheridan Road corridor, and its future has been a subject of sustained community interest. While full details of the financing structure are still emerging, the funding announcement marks a meaningful step forward for a redevelopment project that has been years in the making and represents one of the larger institutional sites in the neighborhood awaiting transformation.
Taken together, these three stories — a Trader Joe's permit secured on Montrose, a 381-unit tower with a Treasure Island inside closing in on its full height at Agatite, and new funding unlocking the Immaculata campus redevelopment — capture the breadth of what is happening in Uptown simultaneously right now. Grocery access, housing supply, and the adaptive reuse of cherished institutional buildings: three of the neighborhood's most persistent conversations are all moving forward at once.
Which of these updates matters most to your daily life in Uptown? Drop your take in the comments and stay connected at exploreuptown.org!
Sources:
1. https://blockclubchicago.org/2026/03/30/trader-joes-planning-new-store-in-uptown/
2. https://www.chicagobusiness.com/retail/ccb-trader-joes-uptown-permit-approved-20260327/
3. https://buildingupchicago.com/category/uptown/
4. https://www.chicagobuildexpo.com/industry-news