Domenico’s Synergy Puts Warrenville Project on Tap

Phil Domenico wants another piece of Chicago’s western suburbs.

Riding the leasing momentum of a gamble on transforming the more than 1 million-square-foot Yorktown Center mall in Lombard into a mixed-use campus featuring big apartment buildings, Domenico’s Chicago-based firm Synergy Construction & Development is now in talks to make a similar play on a 20-acre Warrenville site.

Synergy has partnered with craft beer stalwarts Two Brothers Brewing to overhaul the vacant northwest corner of Butterfield Road and Route 59 in Warrenville, the Daily Herald reported. The joint venture is prioritizing an amenity-rich multifamily development that will serve as the economic engine for the site’s planned retail and dining concepts.

The proposal centers on a 180-unit luxury apartment complex that Synergy would develop. Breaking from dense mid-rises, Synergy plans nine two-story, walk-up buildings offering townhome-style designs, according to the publication. The residential component will feature a clubhouse equipped with a pool, sauna, golf simulator and coworking offices.

For Domenico, residential density is the ultimate catalyst for retail success, a strategy currently paying off at his 270-unit Yorktown Reserve project, which expects to secure 100 leases by its June opening. That’s the initial, $92 million phase of the Lombard mall overhaul, which was built in partnership with Los Angeles-based mall owner Pacific Retail Capital Partners on a former Carson’s store site that was demolished. The project is expected to bring a total of about 600 housing units to the mall campus, with the remainder set to be built during later stages.

In Warrenville, the built-in clientele from the 180 luxury units will feed directly into the project’s commercial centerpiece: a new Two Brothers Brewing tap house and cafe.

Originally envisioned as a standalone brewery campus by Two Brothers, which owns the site, pandemic-era shifts in the hospitality industry prompted the owners to pivot toward a multifamily-anchored model, the newspaper reported. Two Brothers will keep its main brewing operations at its current facility, inside the back of an industrial park on the edge of Fermilab campus. But it will open a morning coffee shop and evening tap house on the new site.

The development will also feature a communal green space for farmers markets, plus additional parcels slated for drive-thru retail and a larger restaurant.

“You’ve got a built-in clientele that’s going to be there every day,” Two Brothers co-founder Jason Ebel told the newspaper regarding the multifamily and retail integration. “They’re going to see those businesses, and they’re going to want to support them.”

Synergy recently presented its vision to the Warrenville Plan Commission for an informal review and aims to submit an official zoning application this summer. The Warrenville City Council’s sign-off would be required for project approval.

— Sam Lounsberry