Is the Hawthorn Mall renovation finished yet?
It's a fair question if you've driven past the Milwaukee Avenue side of the property in the last two years and lost track of what opened when. The honest answer depends on which renovation you mean, because Hawthorn Mall isn't running one project right now. It's running three, and they're on three different clocks that don't line up.
Hawthorn has anchored Lake County shopping since 1973, and it still houses more than 120 specialty retailers, along with the county's only Maggiano's and its own AMC theater. That scale is part of why the redevelopment has felt so constant. Something is always being announced. But if you're a Vernon Hills resident trying to figure out whether the mall is done changing, or trying to plan around construction, or just wondering when the food court will stop looking half-finished, it helps to separate the three projects instead of treating "Hawthorn 2.0" as one blur.
The Clock That's Already Stopped
The first project is the one you can already sit inside. In 2021, Centennial Real Estate demolished the old Sears building and used the footprint to build The Domaine, a 311-unit apartment complex across two four-story buildings, paired with a ground-floor retail street called Hawthorn Row. Both were finished and leased out by 2024.
Hawthorn Row is where most of the "new restaurant in Vernon Hills" headlines have come from. Perry's Steakhouse & Grille opened at 1050 Milwaukee Avenue in April 2024. Wild Fork and Cava opened together at 890 Milwaukee Avenue that same spring. Yard House followed at 950 Milwaukee Avenue in July 2025. Anthropologie, FP Movement, and LoveSac filled out the retail side of the row. Just west, at 151 E. Townline Road, Mendocino Farms opened its first suburban Chicago location on April 21, 2026, after operating only in Willis Tower and River North downtown. Ace Pickleball opened near Harbor Freight on Townline Road over the winter of 2024-2025, and Raising Cane's, approved for a July-to-August 2026 opening at 320 N. Fairway Drive, should be running by now too.
None of that is under construction anymore. It's open, it's been open for a while in some cases, and if you've eaten at any of these places in the past year, you were already standing on the finished half of the redevelopment.
The Clock That's Finishing Right Now
The second project is the one actually happening this month. It has nothing to do with new buildings. It's a $5 million interior refresh of the original 1973 mall structure, the enclosed part with the food court and the corridors that still look like a mall from a different decade.
That work includes a redesigned center court, new lounge seating, upgraded dining-court seating and lighting, updated flooring and railings, and a Kids Zone getting interactive play features, climbing elements, and reading nooks. Reporting from late July and early August of this year put the project on track to be substantially complete by fall 2026, which puts the finish line right about now.
It's easy to conflate this refresh with the bigger $252 million Hawthorn 2.0 redevelopment, because Centennial talks about them together. But the refresh is a separate, much smaller scope. It's cosmetic work on the mall's original bones, not new square footage. Alongside it, AMC Hawthorn 12 recently added an IMAX auditorium, and Tricoci Salon & Spa added a MedSpa location in June 2026. Those are additions to the existing building, not part of any future phase.
The Clock That Hasn't Really Moved
The third project is the one that gets the biggest headlines and is the furthest from finished. This is Phase 2 of Hawthorn 2.0, and it's built on the site of the old Carson Pirie Scott, not the Sears lot.
The apartment count itself has already been revised once. When the Vernon Hills village board gave its unanimous approval in September 2025, the plan called for 288 apartments across two four-story buildings, up from an earlier version of 255, with ground-floor retail also expanded to 37,290 square feet. A plan that grows on paper after it's already been through village review is usually a sign the project is still being negotiated more than it's being built.
According to the timeline released alongside that approval, construction was expected to start in the second quarter of 2026. Even if that held exactly on schedule, the same reporting says the first Phase 2 units won't open until late 2027, with the rest completed by 2028. Beyond that, a new mall entrance and a reworked east and south facade with outward-facing storefronts and landscaped plazas aren't expected to start until 2027 at the earliest.
Here's the plan in one place:
| Project | What it actually is | Status as of September 2026 | Expected finish |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hawthorn Row + The Domaine | Restaurants, retail, and 311 apartments on the former Sears site | Open. Tenants have moved in steadily since 2024 | Already finished |
| Interior refresh | Cosmetic update to the original mall's common areas and Kids Zone | Under construction, reported substantially complete by fall | Fall 2026 |
| Phase 2 | 288 new apartments and expanded retail on the former Carson's site | Construction beginning on the timeline set last fall | Late 2027, fully by 2028 |
The village isn't a passive observer in any of this either. Vernon Hills pledged $46.5 million in pay-as-you-go tax increment financing toward the redevelopment, which is part of why officials keep showing up at outlot ribbon cuttings. The village has a direct financial stake in whether the bet on foot traffic pays off.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
If you've been waiting for the mall to feel finished, the honest expectation to set is this: the version of Hawthorn you'll notice changing this fall is the food court and common areas, not the skyline. That work is close to done. The apartments, the expanded retail, and the new entrance everyone keeps seeing renderings of are still more than a year out at the earliest, and the plan for exactly how big that project gets has already grown once since village review began.
For residents wondering whether all this construction activity says anything about home values nearby, the pattern is worth watching rather than assuming. A single new restaurant doesn't move a housing market. A $252 million mixed-use redevelopment anchored by hundreds of new apartments, a village willing to put $46.5 million behind it, and a steady run of national retail names choosing Vernon Hills over other suburbs is a different kind of signal, and it tends to show up in resale data with a lag, not immediately.
If you're weighing what that kind of sustained investment means for your own property, or whether now is the right time to think about a move in or out of Vernon Hills, that's exactly the conversation Holly Connors has with clients who live near projects like this one. Request a Free Home Valuation and let's talk through what the timeline actually means for you, not just for the mall.
