Grand Avenue Gets Eight New Four-Bedroom Duplexes — and West Town's Best New Restaurant of 2026 Is Right Around the Corner
By Socialhood News · West Town ·
West Town's Grand Avenue corridor had a big week on back-to-back fronts: a fresh City Council vote just reshaped the neighborhood's housing future, and the dining destination that quietly became the corridor's most celebrated new address of 2026 is still drawing crowds months after opening. Both stories are rooted in the same stretch of blocks — and together they sketch a neighborhood that keeps earning attention on multiple registers at once.
First, the bricks. On October 24, the Chicago City Council approved a five-story residential building at 2349 W. Grand Ave., near Western Avenue, that will replace a one-story commercial building and an adjacent vacant lot with eight four-bedroom duplexes, each with a private roof deck. The project contains no ground-floor retail — it is purely residential, and densely so, delivering eight large-format homes to a corridor that has been steadily absorbing new housing throughout 2026. The approval adds to what Hoodline described as "a wave of mid-size residential projects reshaping the Grand Avenue corridor through West Town." Just a few blocks away, a previously approved five-story mixed-use building at 2315 W. Grand — led by developer Panoptic Group — is also in the pipeline, meaning the physical character of this stretch of Grand is actively being rebuilt from the ground up.
For current residents, the pattern is hard to miss. The City Council approvals at 2349 and 2315 W. Grand join a broader queue of West Town development that has been moving through the pipeline all year: a 48-unit building with retail and underground parking approved at 2121 W. Grand, and earlier this summer, a residential conversion of a vacant church at 1459 N. Talman approved to deliver eight new apartments. The neighborhood is adding density deliberately and primarily along its main commercial spines — and Grand Avenue, block by block, is looking more like a destination corridor every month.
A few minutes' walk from the new duplex site, the dining news is equally worth noting. Gilda, Chicago's first Basque-focused tavern, opened this spring at 1450 W. Chicago Ave. in a 44-seat space that previously housed Chi-Latin Restaurant, and it has since landed on OpenTable's list of the best new restaurants of 2026 in Chicago — described as a restaurant that "blends Basque tradition with bold, hi-low cooking." The team behind it is serious: chef Jeremy Leven, previously of mfk. and Mama Delia, built the project with chef Rafa Esparza (Momotaro, Kimski), chef Anthony Baier, and beverage director Ines de Haro. The menu runs on multiple registers simultaneously — a tasting menu for the full evening, first-come pintxos for guests who prefer to graze, and daily specials driven by whatever the kitchen is most excited about. Signature dishes include crispy prawn heads, Iberico pork, and a black Basque cheesecake.
What makes Gilda's origin story particularly West Town is how it got built. Leven and his partners secured their lease in January before they even started fundraising. With help from their families, the team scraped together roughly $70,000 to cover city licenses, a modest buildout, and incidentals — then created a community investment model they called a "Compañero" card, offering discounts and perks to customers who contributed to closing the remaining funding gap. Full opening costs ran between $120,000 and $180,000 by Leven's own estimate. Food suppliers who had known the chefs for years agreed to work on spec for the first month. The restaurant opened not on the back of a deep-pocketed backer but on the accumulated goodwill of a chef who had spent years earning it in Chicago kitchens. That is a meaningful distinction in a neighborhood that has historically rewarded exactly that kind of operator.
Taken together, this week's news — a City Council vote that adds eight large family-sized homes to a corridor that needs them, and a spring opening that has become one of the year's most recognized new restaurants in the city — reinforces how wide West Town's 2026 story actually runs. The neighborhood is adding housing and hospitality depth in the same breath, and the Grand Avenue and Chicago Avenue corridors are the clearest proof. If you want to engage with both this weekend, stop into Gilda at 1450 W. Chicago Ave. for pintxos and walk the Grand Avenue stretch between Western and California to see the corridor that is currently being rebuilt, duplex by duplex, into one of the neighborhood's most dynamic addresses.
Sources:
1. https://hoodline.com/2026/10/west-town-lot-set-for-eight-duplexes-after-city-council-greenlights-grand-avenue-plan/
2. https://www.opentable.com/lists/best-new-restaurants-chicago
3. https://chicago.suntimes.com/food-drink/2026/04/30/gilda-west-town-chicago-independent-restaurant-opening-cost
4. https://colbypricerealtor.com/blog/the-new-spots-reshaping-a-west-town-walk-this-summer
5. https://www.wttw.com/playlist/2026/03/19/upcoming-restaurants-spring-2026