Southport's Longest-Empty Storefronts Just Got Answered, and Foxtrot Isn't Going Home

Have you noticed the plywood finally came off the windows at 3258 N. Southport?

That corner, the one that used to be Schoolyard Tavern, sat dark for six years. Not just quiet, but genuinely empty, the kind of vacancy that becomes part of the scenery on a walk you've done a thousand times. This July, it reopened as a Colectivo Coffee, and if you've been in the neighborhood a while, that single fact raises an obvious question: what took so long, and why now?

The answer says more about where Southport Corridor is headed than any single opening could on its own, especially once you put it next to the other big vacancy that just got resolved two blocks north, and the twist buried inside a Lake View story that everyone assumed would end with a homecoming.

Two Corners, Two Very Different Waits

Schoolyard Tavern closed in 2020, one of the neighborhood's pandemic casualties. Colectivo Coffee signed on for the space in February 2024, which by most timelines should have meant a routine year or so of construction before opening. Instead, the Milwaukee-based roaster hit a wall, literally. Once construction crews got into the building, they found the south wall needed to be rebuilt from scratch, which turned a routine café conversion into a full structural project requiring new permits and engineering review. What was supposed to open in early 2025 didn't open until July 8, 2026, a year and a half late, with the delay hiding behind construction fencing that most people probably stopped noticing months ago.

Compare that to 3334 N. Southport, further up the same street. That building lost its Foxtrot in April 2024, when the grocery-and-café chain abruptly closed every location and filed for bankruptcy. British chocolatier Hotel Chocolat moved into the same shell and opened its doors by April 2025, a year almost to the day. The difference wasn't ambition or demand. It was inheritance. Hotel Chocolat walked into a retail space already built for grab-and-go café traffic, while Colectivo inherited a decades-old bar building that needed to be taken apart before it could be put back together.

If you've been waiting for either corner to reopen, the lesson is the same either way: a long-vacant storefront on Southport usually isn't a sign nobody wants it. It's a sign of what's happening behind the plywood that you can't see from the sidewalk.

The Return That Skipped Its Old Address

Here's the part that catches longtime residents off guard. Foxtrot is coming back to Lakeview. Just not to either of the spots it used to occupy.

The old Southport location is now permanently Hotel Chocolat. And the other pre-closure Lakeview store, near the Broadway and Diversey intersection, isn't coming back either. According to reporting after Foxtrot's collapse, the landlord there had already moved on to a different tenant by the time the company was ready to talk about reopening.

So when Foxtrot announced in late August that it's rejoining the Lakeview community, the address wasn't a return at all. It's a brand new location at 917 W. Belmont Ave., inside the Belmora apartment building near the Belmont CTA stop, a short walk from the old Southport storefront but a different block, a different building, and a different retail identity entirely. The company's timeline points to a summer 2027 opening, which means the neighborhood will spend most of a year with a Hotel Chocolat where the old Foxtrot used to be and an actual new Foxtrot going up somewhere else, at the same time.

It's a strange kind of full circle. The brand comes back. The building doesn't.

What Southport Actually Wants Now

Line up what's replaced what over the past two years and a pattern shows up that has nothing to do with coincidence. Schoolyard Tavern, a dive bar, gave way to a coffee roaster built for daytime seating, 40 seats inside and another 26 on the patio, open 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. daily. The convenience-grocery Foxtrot gave way to an immersive chocolate café built around tastings and a hot chocolate machine called the Velvetiser. Neither swap replaced like with like. Both replaced a nighttime or errand-run business with something meant to be lingered in.

That shift shows up elsewhere on the same stretch this year, too. Grandshire Golf Club is opening on Southport this fall, an indoor golf concept built around a club atmosphere rather than a straightforward driving range or a bar with simulators bolted on. It's another business asking people to spend an evening there, not just pass through.

The restaurant side of the neighborhood tells a related story, though the throughline there is proven operators making a deliberate bet on Lakeview rather than untested newcomers hoping to find an audience. Uncle John's BBQ, a South Side institution that's been smoking rib tips near 69th and Calumet since 2005, opened its first North Side location last week at 947 W. Addison St., directly beneath the Addison Red Line stop and across the street from Wrigley Field. Alderman Bennett Lawson and the Lakeview East Chamber of Commerce cut the ribbon. It's the kind of expansion a business only makes once it's confident the neighborhood can support a second identity beyond its original one.

Milly's Pizza In The Pan made a similar bet, targeting a mid-March opening for its new Broadway location and bringing pan pizzas inspired by the late Burt Katz, the Chicago pizza legend behind Burt's Place. A few blocks over on Clark Street, Apothecary opened in May as a cocktail bar from a former pharmacist leaning into complex, ingredient-driven drinks, and Luckycat Café turned a run of social media buzz and pop-ups into a permanent Clark Street storefront after an AAPI- and woman-owned team built a following one pop-up at a time.

None of these are accidents of timing. They're businesses that looked at Southport and Wrigleyville in 2026 and decided the neighborhood has enough daytime and evening foot traffic to support something more specific than a general-purpose bar or a quick-stop grocery. The corridor isn't just refilling its empty storefronts. It's refilling them with a different kind of business than what left.

What This Means If You Walk These Blocks

If you've lived here through the empty years, the practical upshot is simple. The stretch of Southport between Addison and Roscoe now has a genuine daytime destination in Colectivo, a chocolate café where Foxtrot used to be, an indoor golf club opening this fall, and a barbecue spot with real South Side credentials within easy walking distance of Wrigley Field. The Lakeview Taco Fest just wrapped its 13th year on that same stretch in August, drawing thousands to a street that, six years ago, had one more empty storefront on it than it does today.

Whether you've been here for one of those empty years or all six, the corridor you're walking through right now is meaningfully different from the one that existed even eighteen months ago. Worth knowing exactly what changed, and why it took as long as it did.

If you're weighing what any of this means for your own plans in Lakeview, whether that's understanding how a changing commercial strip affects your block or just wanting a second opinion from people who track this neighborhood closely, Fogel Slate Group is happy to talk it through. Schedule a consultation whenever it's useful.