Naperville's Two New Restaurant Scenes Aren't Competing With Each Other

"We provide a second destination," Rich Dippolito said last year, describing the $53 million overhaul rising along Route 59. He's the vice president of redevelopment at Brixmor Property Group, the company turning the old Westridge Court shopping center into what's now called Block 59. He wasn't being modest about downtown Naperville when he added that it's a place his company "could never replace, and would never want to." He was drawing a line.

That line matters more than most people eating dinner in Naperville right now realize. This city isn't getting one bigger restaurant scene. It's getting two different ones, built on opposite logic, three miles apart, and they're not fighting over the same table.

The Old Answer, Refitted

Downtown's newest arrival is a tavern called The George, and it opened at 245 S. Washington St. in the space that used to be Bev's. The timeline alone tells you something about how downtown does things: Empire Restaurant Group, the team behind Bev's, Hizeman's, and Empire Burger & Brew, originally aimed for an end-of-August 2025 opening. It slipped. The George welcomed its first diners on October 2, 2025 instead, which is a small detail but a telling one. Downtown projects here tend to take the extra month to get the details right rather than rush a launch date.

Those details are the point. Co-owners Dave Miller and Will Cullen worked with the Naperville Historical Society to research who the city's Georges actually were, and the restaurant is built around the answer. George Laird constructed the Pre-Emption House at Main and Chicago in 1834, one of the first hotels built west of Chicago, where a traveler could get a shot of whiskey, a bed, breakfast, and stabling for a horse, all for 35 cents. Naper Settlement recreated that building and uses it as a visitor center today. The George's most talked-about dish, the George Dip, a prime rib French dip with New York aged white cheddar and herbed au jus, is a direct nod to that same hospitality lineage. The Badge 13 Burger honors George Pradel, Naperville's mayor for two decades and, before that, the city's 13th police officer. The kitchen stamps the bun tableside with a cast-iron replica of his old badge. Even Judge Winfred George Knoch and the Martin family, whose estate became the 13 acres that now house Naper Settlement, get a mention somewhere on the menu or the walls.

None of this is incidental theming. It's downtown Naperville doing what downtown Naperville does best: taking a building with history already baked into the block and using a new tenant to make that history visible again. The restaurant seats 150 inside and another 125 on a patio under a 12-foot lighted pergola with a fire pit, entrees run $16 to $34, and on a Friday night the Thai Curry Mussels or the Bourbon Maple Glaze Salmon, cut fresh most mornings, are as likely to come up in conversation as the Badge 13 Burger.

It's not the only downtown story from that stretch. In his 2025 State of the City address, Mayor Scott Wehrli pointed to Oswald's Pharmacy and Anderson's Bookshop, two of the district's actual institutions, both marking 150th anniversaries, alongside recent arrivals like Abercrombie & Fitch, Barnes & Noble, and a Kendra Scott boutique. He also announced that the Washington Street bridge, under construction long enough to become a running joke, was finally finished, drawing one of the loudest ovations of the speech.

The New Answer, Built From a Parking Lot

Three miles away, at Route 59 and Aurora Avenue, the logic is the opposite. Block 59 isn't refitting an old building with a story. It's building roughly 90,000 square feet of new construction on a shopping center that first opened in 1990 and had run its course. There's no historical society involved. There's a developer's spreadsheet and a bet that Naperville's west side had a gap worth filling.

The rollout has been staged in phases since 2025:

• Shake Shack, Stan's Donuts & Coffee, and an 8,700-square-foot Cheesecake Factory opened in spring and early summer 2025
• First Watch, the brunch chain, opened its second Naperville location here that same summer
• Velvet Taco, Yard House, Piccolo Buco (a Cooper's Hawk concept), and Crisp & Green followed by mid-2025
• CAVA opened January 12, 2026, bringing made-in-house bowls, pitas, and juices to the corridor
• Ruth's Chris Steak House was still on the developer's list as of the project's most recent public updates

The center is anchored by tenants that predate the redevelopment, The Fresh Market, Ulta Beauty, Hollywood Palms Cinema, and a Wayfair Outlet that opened in October 2024, plus Lazy Dog Restaurant and Walter E. Smithe. In winter, an outdoor rink called The Rink turns the plaza into a skating destination. It's closed for the season now and set to return in November 2026, which is worth knowing if you're planning a family outing around it rather than showing up to a fenced-off patch of concrete.

The city created a special business district around Block 59, using a 1% sales tax within its boundaries to help reimburse Brixmor for infrastructure costs, which is the kind of financing arrangement that only makes sense if the project is expected to draw regional traffic, not just neighborhood regulars.

Two Destinations, on Purpose

Here's the part that changes how you should think about both places. Dippolito's comment wasn't a throwaway line for a press release. It described a deliberate positioning:

"We provide a second destination for folks to come and really have a great dining and entertainment experience."

Downtown is walkable, historic, and built around an existing identity that a restaurant like The George can plug into and amplify. Block 59 is drivable, new, and built around brand recognition, national chains that Naperville residents already know from other cities, assembled in one place so nobody has to drive 20 miles to reach them. City officials have pointed out that Naperville has long ranked second in Illinois for restaurant revenue, and these two projects aren't splitting that number between them. They're each drawing a different kind of trip.

What This Actually Means If You Live Here

If you're picking where to eat on a Tuesday, Block 59 is built for exactly that. Park once, choose from a dozen recognizable names, and you're in and out without needing a reservation strategy. If you're marking an anniversary, hosting out-of-town family, or just want a restaurant that feels like it belongs to the city rather than to a franchise map, downtown and a table at The George does something Block 59 isn't trying to do.

The mistake would be treating these as competitors and picking a side. They're solving different problems for the same residents. Downtown is investing in specificity, a menu that only makes sense in Naperville, honoring a mayor and a pharmacy anniversary and a 19th-century hotel that still stands two blocks away in recreated form. Block 59 is investing in convenience, betting that proximity beats novelty for most weeknight decisions.

Knowing which is which is a small thing, but it's the kind of small thing that separates someone who's lived here a while from someone still learning the map. The city isn't choosing between its past and its growth. It built room for both, on purpose, three miles apart.

If you're weighing a move to a neighborhood where the local color runs this deep, Trevor Pauling has spent a career watching Naperville change block by block. Let's Connect.