Downtown Northbrook’s biggest new dining draw has no dedicated parking lot but doesn’t seem to need it. The Lucky Fish restaurant, however, may be the only new downtown business without a parking problem, officials say, and the situation may be blocking other new businesses.
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“We’re kind of coming to the day of reckoning to figure out what we’re going to do,” Northbrook planning and building head Tom Poupard said. “If we don’t do something to provide more parking, we aren’t going to be able to do anything for more development unless we wait for autonomous cars.”
Poupard was guiding the Northbrook Plan Commission Sept. 5 as they worked on a new downtown code, intended to spur redevelopment, which they plan to deliver to the Northbrook Village Board this fall.
Lucky Fish, 349 Shermer Road, had asked for and received special considerations from Northbrook to allow valet parking ahead of its much-anticipated late spring opening.
“We actually thought about canceling it,” owner Steve Geffen said Friday of the valet offering. “People aren’t using it at all.”
He said, however, that lack of demand may be due to the weather.
“Once it gets cold and nasty,” Geffen said, “we’ll depend on that.”
With 75 seats in the restaurant, and 75 seats on the patio out back, it may seem mysterious where customers are parking. At night, some park in the big commuter lot a block away, south of the Metra station, free after 5 p.m. During the day, they catch as catch can, but it works, officials say, because customers want it to work.
“Obviously Lucky Fish is popular (and it’s) large enough that people are drawn to it,” Poupard said.
The much-smaller Drumstix Market chicken restaurant — also new — sits in the 1363 Shermer Road office building, a block away, but on the other, west side of the Metra tracks. Drumstix recently asked that two of the parking spaces along the west side of the building be changed from two-hour to 20-minute spaces so they could be used for quick dining and takeout, officials said.
Owners of Drumstix, which opened late last year, did not return calls seeking comment.
Plan commission member Jojo Hebl said, there are already several short-term parking spaces a short distance from Drumstix in a small Metra lot just east of the tracks, on Lorenz Drive. They seem to often go unused, she said, because Lorenz is one-way north, toward Shermer, and must be reached by driving in a circle.
“If you’re not a resident of Northbrook, you may not know where it is,” Hebl said.
Lorenz Drive, renamed from Railroad Avenue in 1999, still doesn’t turn up on Google Maps. Neither does Railroad Avenue.
Plan Commissioner Dan Pepoon said the parking situation may have contributed to a series of restaurant failures in the 1363 Shermer Road space prior to the more popular Drumstix.
“If you put Lucky Fish in that building, they’d struggle as well,” he said.
The big commuter lot’s free nighttime parking is little-used, Poupard said.
“We could add some more signage,” he said. “We have those gigantic evergreens in front … maybe we could make the parking lot more visible.”
In general, officials have the same lament about downtown Northbrook parking they’ve had for decades: People don’t seem to want to walk more than a few steps.
Two commissioners had suggestions to accommodate downtown Northbrook customers. Steve Elisco said that small vacant parcels should be bought up by the village and turned into more convenient lots. Bryan Schimel suggested trying to buy a few feet of Village Green Park to accommodate pull-in parking on Meadow Road, more than doubling capacity.
Northbrook Trustee James Karagianis, who heads the Village Board Planning and Zoning Committee, liked both ideas, while noting drawbacks. The lots might be expensive, and the pull-in parking scheme has been previously nixed by the Northbrook Park District because of its proximity to a playground.
Village President Sandy Frum said Friday that downtown Northbrook has some existing parking that seems convenient, but people just don’t use it. That includes a strip of commuter spaces, just west of the tracks, north of Shermer, that are cost-free at night. She agreed with those who note that Northbrook shoppers and diners don’t seem to want to walk across the tracks.
“Part of the problem is, we’ve got parking, but it’s not in the right places,” she said. “Is it time to get a professional in to tell us what demand there is, and when, and see what solutions they and we can come up with?”
Geffen said for Lucky Fish, it doesn’t seem to matter right now.
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“We get a lot of walk-up, coming from the homes in the area,” he said, adding that the percentage seems to exceed the 5 or 10 percent of total patronage that officials guess is the upper level anywhere in downtown.
“I don’t know how much, but I would say closer to 30 and 40 percent,” he said.