Salerno's Pizzeria & R. Bar went dark at 821 Burlington Ave in early January. If you've walked that block since, you already know the space hasn't sat empty for long. Chris Elsey, who owns Hillgrove Tap here in Western Springs and another location in Tinley Park, has filed for a liquor license and is aiming to open an Italian restaurant called Alano Ristorante in that same storefront by late October.
If this sequence feels familiar, it should. Burlington Avenue already ran this exact play once before, with a restaurant most residents cared about a lot more than a pizza shop.
The pattern isn't "restaurants closing." It's that the same handful of storefronts keep closing and reopening as slightly different, slightly more polished versions of the same idea. That's worth understanding if you eat on this street regularly, because it tells you what's likely to fill a dark storefront before the "For Lease" sign even goes up.
Two Swaps, Side by Side
| Storefront | What Closed | What's Replacing It | Scale / Price Point | Opening |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 909 Burlington Ave | Vie, Chef Paul Virant's flagship (2004–Oct. 2023) | Petite Vie, a smaller French brasserie from the same chef | About 65 seats, entrées roughly $18 to $36 at opening | Opened May 2024 |
| 821 Burlington Ave | Salerno's Pizzeria & R. Bar (closed early Jan. 2026) | Alano Ristorante, an "elegant" Italian concept | Estimated $30 to $45 per person | Targeting late October 2026 |
Same street. Same rough footprint. Same instinct from whoever takes over the lease: don't reinvent the block, upgrade what was already working on it.
Why Vie Actually Closed
Vie wasn't a struggling restaurant. It ran for nearly two decades and built the kind of reputation that made Paul Virant a name diners recognized outside the suburbs. What ended it was the building, not the kitchen. Virant has said the landlord pushed to raise the rent aggressively, and rather than absorb that, he walked. A nearby building with an existing restaurant space came up for sale, and this time he bought it outright instead of leasing it.
That detail matters more than it might seem. Petite Vie exists at 909 Burlington Ave because Virant now owns the real estate underneath it. The restaurant that replaced a beloved 19-year run isn't a hedge against risk. It's a bet made by someone who removed the landlord problem entirely before reopening.
Petite Vie leans smaller and more casual than Vie ever was: French brasserie standards like duck confit and steak frites, a wine list built for lingering, and a footprint of about 65 seats rather than a full flagship dining room. Brunch runs Friday through Sunday and dinner most nights of the week, according to the restaurant's current hours. It isn't trying to be Vie again. It's trying to be sustainable in a way Vie's lease structure never let it be.
What Alano Is Stepping Into
Chris Elsey isn't a stranger to this stretch of Burlington Avenue. He already owns Hillgrove Tap a few doors down, and before that he was managing partner at Francesca's, the restaurant group with locations across Elmhurst, Naperville, and other Chicago suburbs. In his liquor license application for the Salerno's space, he described Alano as an "elegant Italian restaurant" with an estimated price point between $30 and $45 per person before alcohol. The menu on file includes appetizers, salads, pastas, pizza, fish, chicken, and steaks, alongside a bar program built around specialty cocktails and wine.
The application also notes only minor remodeling planned for the interior, with the existing special event space kept and upgraded. That's a meaningfully different approach than gutting a storefront and starting over. Elsey is stepping into Salerno's physical shape, its price tier relative to what a pizza-and-bar concept commanded, and even its event space, then raising the polish level. It's the same move Virant made one storefront over, on a compressed timeline and a smaller scale.
The Sidewalk Bump-Outs Weren't Decoration
Here's the part that doesn't show up in restaurant reviews. In 2024, the Village of Western Springs completed a Burlington Avenue streetscape project between Grand Avenue and Wolf Road, awarding the $1.9 million contract to Plano-based H. Linden & Sons, a bid that came in about $500,000 above the village engineer's own $1.4 million estimate. The work replaced a water main on Burlington that was nearly a century old. It also added two sidewalk "bump outs" on each block specifically designed to expand space for outdoor dining while keeping the sidewalk clear for foot traffic, plus a raised crosswalk between Lawn Avenue and Wolf Road built to improve access to the train platform.
During construction, business owners felt it directly. Katie McMillan of Clever Girl boutique told the Village Board the disruption was significant enough that she supported letting crews start earlier each day to shorten the timeline, and Village True Value Hardware owner Linda Johnson pushed for the same, hoping her block would wrap by mid-November.
The payoff for that disruption is now baked into the sidewalk. A storefront on Burlington Avenue today comes with more built-in outdoor seating capacity than it did three years ago. That's a physical reason a chef-driven concept like Petite Vie or a full-service Italian restaurant like Alano makes more sense here than it might have before the bump-outs existed. The village didn't just repave a street. It built infrastructure that specifically rewards sit-down restaurants over quick-serve ones.
What Isn't Changing
It's worth pointing out what has stayed exactly the same while all this restaurant turnover has played out around it. Kirschbaum's Bakery has operated from its current spot on Burlington since 1954, having been in business in the village since 1953. Village True Value Hardware has held its own storefront on the same street since 1954. Neither has had to reinvent itself, relocate, or negotiate a new lease structure to survive.
That's the real shape of the pattern. It isn't that Burlington Avenue is in flux. It's that the restaurant slots specifically cycle, while the errand-based anchors around them hold steady. If you're trying to predict what happens to the next vacant storefront on this block, the bakery and the hardware store are not your model. The last two restaurant closures are.
Walking Burlington This Fall
Petite Vie is already running its full schedule, with brunch service Friday through Sunday and dinner most nights. Alano is targeting a late October opening, which would put it on the street in time for the shift toward earlier dinners and colder weather. The weekly French Market still sets up on Wednesdays from 4 to 7 p.m. in front of Tower Green on Hillgrove Avenue, a block over from all of this restaurant activity, and it's usually paired with live music or another small draw.
If you're wondering whether the village plans to keep investing in this kind of infrastructure, the planning phase for a similar Hillgrove Avenue improvement project has already begun. Burlington got the sidewalk bump-outs and the new water main first. Hillgrove appears to be next in line.
None of this requires you to do anything except notice it on your next walk down Burlington. But if you've been curious what a storefront reinvention like this does to property values on the block around it, or you're simply weighing what your own home is worth while the street outside your door keeps getting nicer, Angela Walker Homes puts together a free home valuation with no pressure attached. It's a good excuse to find out what two years of streetscape work and a steady stream of upgraded restaurants has actually done to the numbers on your street.
