Harwood Heights’ Holiday Plaza shopping center has almost wrapped up a months-long makeover on the 68,500 square-foot strip mall, so village officials and local businesses celebrated Oct. 22 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
During the renovation process, which began in early April, workers replaced the facade of the L-shaped shopping mall with new brick, installed new windows in all 10 retail spaces, added more parking, and installed lighting towers on top of the building, according to John Harder, one of the property managers for Moonbeam Investments, the company that manages Holiday Plaza.
The lighting towers and new facade were intended to give the retail center a refreshed look and to enhance its visibility from the street, according to the village.
Construction crews also reconfigured the front parking lot and widened the main entryway drive off of Harlem Avenue to eliminate the narrow turns drivers had to make when entering the parking lot.
The project is completely finished except for the signage, Harder explained. The shopping center, which is anchored by Vince’s Restaurant, Rich’s Food’s and Liquors, and OfficeMax, will get a new monument-style sign at the west end of the parking lot near the food store, and the main sign at the entrance at Harlem and Lawrence avenues will be replaced within a few weeks, he said.
The main sign, according to the village, did not have enough space to accommodate all of the tenants, so the new signage will be made larger and placed atop a single base instead of the two-pillar base that holds the current sign.
A new Starbucks with a drive-through lane that opened about a month ago in a newly-built stand-alone building at the edge of the property closest to Harlem Avenue most prominent addition to the complex.
The opening of the coffee shop at 4747 N. Harlem Ave. on Sept. 24 marked the first-ever Starbucks in the village of Harwood Heights.
Ron Foreman, whose family owns Holiday Plaza with co-owner Tim Friedman, said Starbucks was a catalyst for the renovations of the surrounding shopping center.
“As a result of Starbucks coming in, we started to renovate the whole thing,” Foreman said. “Harwood Heights showed an interest in working with us to upgrade the property, and as a result, that’s what happened.”
Illinois State Sen. John Mulroe stopped by the grand reopening ceremony for Holiday Plaza. He said Starbucks opening at a busy intersection was an important stride for Harwood Heights, which previously didn’t have any specialty coffee retailers.
“Starbucks is a magnet for people,” Mulroe said. “It will bring people into the village who will hopefully visit the businesses in this complex.”
Out of the 10 retail spaces in the strip mall, one 5,262-square-foot space is vacant. Vince’s Italian Restaurant and Hair Cuttery are the only two original tenants that moved opened in Holiday Plaza when the site was reconfigured from a bowling alley to a strip mall in 1988, according to Harwood Heights mayor Arlene Jezierny.
As part of the renovations, the owners of Vince’s are unveiling a newly-remodeled restaurant under a new name. Now known as “Vince’s and RoccoVino’s,” the restaurant was renamed to pay homage to brothers Savino “Nuch” D’Argento and Rocco DeFrenza, who co-own the family-run restaurant.
D’Argento said he planned to keep 80 percent of the restaurant’s classic Italian menu, but would add dishes like the potato-crusted salmon the stuffed pork chop.
“We remodeled the inside with a whole new look to represent our plan to present a twist on traditional Italian,” D’Argento said.
As for the strip mall renovations, D’Argento said he hopes Starbucks will help bring in more customers.
“I think we’ll get new business — that’s our goal — for more people to get to know the Norridge and Harwood Heights area for having great local businesses, as well as chains,” D’Argento said.
The new menu is expected to be rolled out on Tuesday, Nov. 10.
Before Holiday Plaza opened in the late 1980s, the site was occupied by Holiday Bowl, a bowling alley owned by the Foreman and the Friedman families, who later sold and rebought the property before redeveloping the site into the shopping center.
Natalie Hayes is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
