Walk west on Randolph past Racine and the block reads like it always has: exposed brick, a line outside a lunch spot, a bike courier locking up outside what used to be Allbirds. Except it isn't Allbirds anymore. The shoebox-shaped storefront at 833 W. Randolph now belongs to Reformation, and a few blocks down at 946 W. Randolph, a Los Angeles athleisure label called Set just opened its first store outside the coasts, styled to look like a Midwest lake house, complete with a hook-and-ring toss game in the dressing room.
Reformation and Set have opened storefronts on Randolph, while Rick Owens has announced a Fulton Market flagship. Nearby residential towers are under construction or planned, and no residents have moved into them yet. If you live here now, the shops on your walk to the Green Line are arriving ahead of those towers.
What Actually Changed on Randolph This Fall
Here's the tally, as of this month:
| Business | Address | What Happened | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Set (athleisure) | 946 W. Randolph St. | Opened its first Midwest store, third location overall after LA and NYC | Open now |
| Reformation | 833 W. Randolph St. | Replaced a former Allbirds storefront | Open since spring |
| Rick Owens | Fulton Market (exact address not yet released) | Flagship announced earlier this year | Not yet open |
| Trader Joe's | 170 N. May St. | Planned anchor tenant for a 287-unit tower | Under construction, no confirmed date |
| Aldi | 1000 W. Jackson Blvd. (Julep West Loop) | Anchor tenant for a 380-unit tower | Broke ground this month, first occupancy mid-2028 |
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Set's shop is small by design, just over 1,100 square feet, and the brand leaned hard into local specificity: Chicago sports references throughout the space, limited-edition merchandise sold nowhere else in the country. That's not incidental. Set's leadership has said publicly that when they scout a new market, they're asking where their customer lives, works, and goes out, and concluded Chicago made sense for that reason. Reformation's own explanation for choosing Fulton Market was almost identical in substance: the brand's spokesperson described the corridor as a natural fit because it sits at the center of where their customer lives, works, and spends her time.
Both brands are describing a customer who, in a meaningful sense, isn't fully here yet.
The Corridor Behind the Corridor
Here's the number that should reframe how you read all of this. West Loop ranked only third citywide in new retail business licenses issued between 2020 and 2025, trailing both the Loop and New City. If you're judging West Loop purely on volume of new storefronts opening across the entire neighborhood, it's not even the busiest place in Chicago to open a shop.
But narrow the lens to the Fulton Market corridor specifically, and the story flips. Fulton Market was the second most frequented retail corridor in the entire city last year, behind only Michigan Avenue, and it posted a 4.1 percent year-over-year increase in foot traffic, the highest growth rate among the city's seven busiest retail corridors. So the neighborhood isn't generating the most new shops. It's generating the most concentrated foot traffic growth in a corridor that's only a handful of blocks wide.
That distinction matters if you live here, because it explains something you've probably felt without being able to name it: the crowding on Randolph and Fulton Market doesn't feel proportional to how many people actually live within walking distance today. It isn't. The retail activity is arriving ahead of the residential growth these projects may bring.
The Towers Nobody's Moved Into Yet
Two grocery-anchored residential projects are under construction or planned within a few blocks of the same storefronts Set and Reformation just leased, and neither one has a resident in it yet.
Julep West Loop, a 25-story building at 1000 W. Jackson Blvd. from Mavrek Development and Fengate Asset Management, broke ground this month. It will bring 380 apartments, 76 of them affordable, anchored by a 22,000-square-foot Aldi, the chain's first West Loop location. Skender is the general contractor, and the timeline calls for roughly 21 months of construction, putting first occupancy at mid-2028.
A few blocks north, a separate two-phase development at 170 N. May St. and 175 N. Racine Ave. is planned to bring 667 apartments total, 133 of them affordable, with Trader Joe's confirmed as the anchor tenant for a 17,000-square-foot space in the first phase. Trader Joe's hasn't publicly confirmed the plans itself, but the building's own attorney has, and Trader Joe's already operates 22 other locations across Chicago.
Add those two projects together and you get more than 1,000 new apartments either under construction or fully approved within easy walking distance of the same Randolph Street block where Set just cut a ribbon. None of those apartments are occupied. Some won't be occupied until 2028. Meanwhile, the retail brands moving onto Randolph are arriving before that residential growth.
As Block Club Chicago reported, a Reformation spokesperson said: "Fulton Market is a natural fit because it sits at the center of where our customer lives, works and spends her time."
That's a retailer describing a customer base that, in the case of the residential towers nearby, is still mostly theoretical.
What $140 a Square Foot Signals
Reformation reportedly signed a lease exceeding $140 per square foot for its Randolph Street storefront, putting a specific number on the corridor's commercial rents.
For residents and property owners, the timing is worth noting: Randolph's new storefronts are open before the nearby towers are occupied. Julep is under construction, while the May Street development is planned, so retail activity and residential growth are arriving on different timelines.
Walking It This Week
If you're doing the loop from Fulton Market back toward Madison this week, here's what's actually different from a few months ago: the Allbirds storefront at 833 W. Randolph is gone, replaced by Reformation's racks of denim and workwear. A few doors down, Set's lake house-themed shop is running its opening promotions, including a hat and patch bar that pulled a line on launch day. Neither of these openings required a single new resident to move in. They required a lease, a build-out, and a bet on where Chicago's retail money is already flowing, which right now points at Fulton Market ahead of almost every other corridor in the city.
The towers with the grocery stores are the part that will actually change the neighborhood's daily rhythm, the sidewalk traffic, the school and park usage, the parking. That part hasn't happened yet. What's happened is the retail signal arriving early, the way it tends to in corridors that developers and national brands have already decided are worth betting on before the concrete cures.
If you've lived in West Loop long enough to remember what Randolph looked like before this wave, you already know how fast these blocks can turn over. The current version, Reformation next to Set with Julep under construction and the May Street development planned a few blocks away, is worth paying attention to now, because as those projects move toward completion, the block will have moved on to whatever comes next.
For more on how West Loop's growth is shaping up block by block, the West Loop neighborhood page tracks what's changing here in real time, and our recent look at the chefs returning to West Loop this summer covers the other half of the corridor's current wave.
If you're weighing what any of this means for a property you own or are watching in the neighborhood, Marcello Navarro brings two decades of construction and general contracting experience to the conversation, alongside neighborhood-level knowledge of exactly what's rising, what's leasing, and what it's likely worth. Request a construction-forward consultation and home valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
