Why Northfield's Former Mariano's Grocery Store Is Empty

Drive north on Willow Road past the Edens Expressway ramp and you'll pass the same dark windows you passed last summer, and the one before that. The lot at 1822 Willow Road still gets swept. The sign brackets are still bolted to the brick above the entrance. But no register has rung inside that building since June 2025, when Mariano's closed its doors after eleven years, and for a site that held a grocery store for something close to fifty years running, more than a year of silence has stopped feeling like a pause and started feeling like the new normal.

The easy assumption is that nobody wants to run a supermarket in a village of under 6,000 people. That assumption turns out to be wrong, and wrong in a very specific way. Someone did want it, badly enough to spend seven months negotiating for it. Residents wanted it badly enough to applaud a zoning vote. What killed the deal wasn't a lack of interest, and it wasn't a village government dragging its feet on approvals. Somewhere between the landlord and the grocer, at a level residents will probably never see itemized, a private negotiation fell apart. That's the real story of Willow Road right now, and it says something about how much leverage one property owner can hold in a town this size, a fact that no amount of public enthusiasm was able to override.

The Deal That Had Everybody's Support

In July 2025, The Record North Shore reported that an unnamed applicant had filed for a special use permit at 1822 Willow Road. The applicant turned out to be Sunset Foods, the Highland Park based grocer founded in 1937 by John Cortesi and his uncle Adeodata Fondata, and now run by a third generation Cortesi as CEO. Over the decades Sunset had expanded to Northbrook in 1961, Lake Forest in 1965, Libertyville in 1998, and Long Grove in 2010, and had acquired the longtime North Shore chain Grand Food Center in 2021.

At the August 2025 Plan and Zoning Commission meeting, a standing room crowd of roughly 50 residents applauded when the commission unanimously approved Sunset's request. The application described a deli, bakery, wine and spirits section, and full grocery aisles, plus two signature concepts already running in Sunset's other stores, a barbecue counter called Smokehouse and an acai bowl bar called BeriGood. Sunset expected to employ around 100 people across a seven day schedule, open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. and closing only on Christmas. Its attorney told the commission construction would "more than likely" occupy most of 2026, with an opening targeted for late 2026 or spring 2027.

By any normal measure, that's a deal working exactly as it should. Unanimous zoning approval. A crowd showing up to clap for a grocery store. An applicant with a nearly 90 year identity on the North Shore and a format built for a town like this one.

Then, on February 24, 2026, it was over.

The Owner Nobody Elected

At that evening's Village Board meeting, Village President Tracey Mendrek announced that Sunset Foods and the property owner, Swanson Development Group, had been unable to reach an agreement after months of negotiation. It was unclear by press time what caused the impasse, and Swanson representatives did not return messages from the paper. "Like all of you, we are disappointed by this outcome," Mendrek said, "but after eight months of a vacant storefront, this board must turn our attention to a new solution for the location."

The ownership structure here matters. Swanson Development Group, along with an affiliated entity, acquired the property and the underlying Mariano's lease in 2023. That means the party deciding the future of Northfield's only supermarket site isn't a longtime grocery family with roots in the community. It's a real estate holder that bought a leased asset with a set of numbers already built into the deal.

The same 2025 zoning file offers a clue about what those numbers might require. Alongside the grocery permit, the commission separately approved a 12,000 square foot outlot at the northwest corner of the property, with no tenant yet lined up. The property owner's attorney told the commission that outbuilding was "critical for the economic viability of the property and the lease." In plain terms, the main grocery tenant alone might not carry the site financially anymore. A second income stream, one that didn't exist when Dominick's or Mariano's ran the building, had become part of what needed to work.

None of this confirms exactly why Sunset walked away. But it explains how a deal with this much visible support could still collapse. A landlord balancing two leases at once has more variables on the table than a grocer simply moving a regional chain into a new storefront.

The Village's New Bet

By April 28, 2026, trustees stopped waiting on Swanson to solve it alone. The Village Board approved a nine month moratorium on new office uses within the Village Center Zoning District, directing the Plan and Zoning Commission to study what should actually be permitted downtown before another use fills the vacancy by default. Mendrek pointed back to resident feedback gathered at a Committee of the Whole meeting the board had held off site the previous September, at The Happ Inn, and she noted that neighboring towns including Northbrook, Glenview, Deerfield and Highland Park had each used redevelopment plans to reshape their own downtowns in recent years. Her framing was that this might be Northfield's opening to decide what a village center should become, rather than accepting whichever tenant shows up first.

By mid-May 2026, reporting indicated the site remained empty and no new tenant had been lined up. Village Manager Patrick Brennan said he didn't have much news to share, but that the village continued talking with the property owner on a nearly weekly basis and that a grocer "remains on the table." Terry Dason, president and CEO of the Winnetka-Northfield-Glencoe Chamber of Commerce, said there is certainly disappointment among residents and that the village is aware many would like to see the space continue as a grocery store.

What It Means If You Drive Willow Road

For now, the nearest Sunset Foods locations sit in Northbrook, Highland Park, Lake Forest, Libertyville and Long Grove, each requiring a drive out of the village for the kind of weekly shop that used to be a few minutes from Central Avenue.

The building held a grocery store continuously for close to five decades before this gap opened, which is part of why the vacancy reads as unusual rather than routine. This was never a location that failed on its own merits. Mariano's exit was tied to a broader retrenchment at its parent company, which closed or announced closures of roughly 60 stores nationwide around the same period, not to anything specific about demand in Northfield.

That distinction is worth sitting with if you're trying to read where this goes next. Demand for a grocery store here isn't the open question. Sunset wanted in, a crowd showed up to applaud the zoning vote, and the Chamber of Commerce is still fielding complaints from residents who miss the convenience. What's actually unresolved is whether a single landlord and a single tenant can agree on terms for a building that, for the first time in its history, may need to carry more than one income stream to pencil out.

The moratorium buys the village time to answer that on its own terms rather than by default. Whether the next chapter is another supermarket, a different retail mix, or something closer to the comprehensive plan's language about a walkable gathering space downtown, the decision now sits with a Plan and Zoning Commission that's been told to think past simply filling square footage.

For residents who already call Northfield home, this is one of those slow moving stories worth watching, not because it changes tomorrow's errand run, but because whatever fills 1822 Willow Road will shape the daily rhythm of the village center for the next several decades. If you're curious how conversations like this one tend to ripple into a neighborhood's character and, eventually, into home values on the North Shore, Mary Grant is always glad to talk it through. Schedule a private consultation whenever the timing is right for you.