Westfield Old Orchard Mall and Richtree Market Restaurants, Inc., (owners of Wilde and Greene Restaurant and Natural Market) have recently introduced the first restaurant/shopping concept of its kind in the U.S. Graycor Construction Company, OKW Architects and GHA Design collaborated with both the landlord and the new tenant to bring this modern concept to life at Old Orchard Mall in Skokie, Illinois.

The unique feature about this concept is that it is not just a restaurant, but also a natural market shopping experience. It is an indoor farmer’s market with an open kitchen concept with cuisine from across the globe. The market is designed to be highly engaging to facilitate mingling amongst visitors, chefs and other patrons – one watches the meal being prepared fresh, and has the option of asking the chef a question about the ingredients. All food prepared and sold in the market is organic, free range or naturally raised. A plethora of cuisine concepts are available with 18 food stations which vary from sushi, pizza, pasta, gelato, seafood, oyster bar, crepes, omelets and more.

This new restaurant and shopping concept replaces the existing food court at Westfield Old Orchard Mall. The 30,000 square foot project consists of several components: retrofit of an existing multi-tenant food court building; completion of the core, shell and tenant interior scope; and custom millwork. Graycor’s main challenge on this project included maintaining multi-level coordination efforts with the tenant. As this was the first U.S.-based restaurant/shopping concept that Richtree Market Restaurant, Inc. had implemented, there were unique challenges with finding new vendors and collaborating with local Chicago-based firms. An aggressive schedule required careful coordination to meet both the landlord and tenant needs.