"I'm excited to see that restaurant space get revived and come back to life."
That's what Antoine Washington told the Homewood Village Board this spring, right before it approved his liquor license for 3B Burger-Bird-Brews House. Washington isn't new to the restaurant business. He already owns 20 other spots scattered across the southwest suburbs. What he did this year was simple on paper and telling in practice: he bought a restaurant that had gone quiet, kept the walls, and put something new inside them.
That single transaction on Dixie Highway says more about how downtown Homewood actually grows than any development announcement could. This isn't a town that adds square footage to feel different from one year to the next. It's a town that keeps the same buildings, the same alleys, the same three blocks off Ridge Road, and simply changes what's happening inside the frame. The murals prove it. The new restaurant proves it again. And this October, Fall Fest is going to close the exact same streets where both of those stories just played out.
The Same Address, A Different Kitchen
Washington purchased the property at 18755 Dixie Highway in February, taking over what had been Cilantro Cocina Mexicana. By late March, the Village Board had signed off on a Class 5 liquor license, and Washington was telling reporters he planned to open by May under a new concept called 3B Burger-Bird-Brews House, built around burgers, chicken, and beer.
What's worth noticing isn't the menu. It's the math. Washington didn't need a vacant lot or a rezoning fight. He needed a kitchen that already existed, a liquor license that already fit the building's use, and a few months to swap the signage. He's since said he wants to franchise the concept, which means Homewood's Dixie Highway location isn't a side project. It's the pilot. By the time Fall Fest closes the surrounding blocks in October, the restaurant will have had a full season to become part of the regular rotation rather than the new place everyone's still deciding whether to try.
That's the pattern that defines this downtown. Growth here doesn't look like construction cranes. It looks like a for-lease sign coming down and a different name going up over the same doorway.
Fifteen Murals, Zero New Walls
The clearest version of that pattern predates any restaurant on Dixie Highway by four decades. In the early 1980s, the village invited muralist Richard Haas to Homewood specifically to rejuvenate interest in a downtown that needed it. Haas didn't get new buildings to work with. He got the rear walls of existing storefronts along Ridge Road, and he turned them into trompe l'oeil scenes that fooled the eye into seeing depth where there was only brick. Homewood now holds the largest collection of Haas murals anywhere in the world, all of them painted onto structures that were already standing when he arrived.
The most recent addition to that visual identity followed the same logic. When the Hartford Building went up at Ridge Road and Martin Avenue, it created an alleyway next to the Loulou Belle gift shop at 2049 Ridge Road, a gap nobody had planned for and needed to make presentable. The village commissioned artist Nate Otto, who lives on Chicago's South Side, to fill it. Otto spent time walking downtown with village trustee Jay Heiferman, photographed ten different Homewood locations, and distilled them into a mural that now anchors that same accidental alley. He wasn't given a blank canvas so much as a leftover space, which is exactly how Homewood's public art has worked since Haas first showed up.
Even the town's newest visual statement, in other words, is a reuse story. Nothing about downtown's identity required new ground.
The Festival That Closes the Same Streets Every October
Fall Fest lands on Saturday, October 10 this year, and the closures start the day before. Martin Avenue shuts down between Ridge Road and Hickory Road at 8 a.m. on Friday, October 9, with Hickory Road itself closing from Dixie Highway to Harwood Avenue by noon. Anyone who drives through that stretch on a Friday morning should plan an alternate route, because the village isn't reopening those blocks until the festival wraps up Saturday night.
What happens inside those closures is a full day built around the same downtown blocks that just got a new restaurant and have been carrying Haas murals for forty years. The published schedule includes:
- 12 to 2 p.m.: live music from 51 Lincoln
- 12 to 7 p.m.: free face painting
- 1 to 4 p.m.: kids' craft activities
- 1 to 7 p.m.: a free rock climbing wall
- 2 to 3 p.m.: chili cook-off judging
- 3 to 5 p.m.: open chili tasting for the public
- 4 to 6 p.m.: the pumpkin patch opens, alongside a live set from Southtown Soul & Groove
- 7 to 9 p.m.: live music from Infinity closes out the night
The chili cook-off itself is a returning tradition, open to anyone willing to enter a recipe and face a judging panel before the public tasting. Food from several Homewood restaurants rounds out the afternoon, which means the same storefronts that have been quietly changing hands all year get their moment as the festival's actual menu.
Walk Martin Avenue that Saturday and you're covering ground that's been doing this exact trick for decades: same three blocks, same festival footprint, different names on the awnings depending on the year.
What This Buys You If You Already Live Here
None of this requires a plan beyond showing up. If Fall Fest crowds aren't your speed, the Trail Mix Concert Series at the 193-acre Izaak Walton Preserve, about a mile and a half from downtown, runs on its own quieter calendar through the fall and gives you the outdoor-music fix without the chili lines. Homewood Brewing Company, founded as a tribute by the mother of the late rapper Juice Wrld, has its own seasonal rhythm too, including an Oktoberfest beer release that's become part of the town's late-summer routine.
But the honest takeaway is simpler than a list of alternatives. Homewood doesn't manufacture new reasons to visit downtown. It recycles the ones it already has. A Mexican restaurant becomes a burger joint. A construction-leftover alley becomes public art. A festival that's closed these same streets for years closes them again, and the only thing that's actually different is what you'll find behind the storefronts once you get there. That's not a lack of ambition. It's a town that figured out decades ago that the fastest way to feel new is to keep changing what's inside buildings you already trust.
If you're weighing a move within Homewood or Flossmoor, or you're just curious what a downtown like this does to property values over time, DeMarcus Hunter knows these blocks well enough to talk through it honestly. Book a consultation whenever you're ready.
