New Sendik's in Whitefish Bay Is Open: What's Next for the Corner?
October 8, 2026
October 8, 2026
The new Sendik's Food Market at 500 E. Silver Spring Drive opened on Sept. 23, a month after the old store closed. Most of the coverage stopped at the ribbon cutting. The store is only half the project, though. It was built to keep people on the corner longer, with a restaurant upstairs, rooms you can rent and a small park in the lot. The village has decided not to settle how parking works around it until the rest of the corner is finished. So the corner you're driving to this fall is temporary, and the next few months will set how it works for years.
As of the last week of September, the project stands like this:
| Piece of the project | Status as of Sept. 30, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Grocery store, 500 E. Silver Spring Dr. | Open since Sept. 23 |
| 119-space parking lot on the old store site | Striped and in use |
| Tudi's Bar and Restaurant, upstairs | Described as "imminent" on Sept. 29; no confirmed opening date |
| Traffic signal at Silver Spring and Consaul Place | Still to come |
| Plantings around the site | Still to come |
| Pocket park, northwest corner of the lot | Still to come |
| New village monument sign at Silver Spring and Lake | Design final; not yet installed |
| Silver Spring meter payment | Coins and cards stop working Oct. 1 |
| Long-term parking plan for the district | Paused; to be revisited after construction |
The old store went up in 1949 and was expanded several times. It came down on Aug. 23, and its site is now the 119-space parking lot. The new building stands on the eastern part of the parcel, where a one-story office and retail building used to be. Building it there let the old store stay open for almost all of the seven-month project. That's why the front door now faces west, toward the lot, and why the familiar walk in from the Lake Drive corner is gone.
The new store is about 95,000 square feet over two floors. Its layout spreads you out across the whole building. The Journal Sentinel's preview describes a main floor that loops around a large mezzanine. A bakery, a popcorn station and a coffee shop sit across from the produce section. On the west side, a row of prepared-food counters includes salad, pasta, hot food, sushi, burritos and made-to-order sandwiches. The store has more than 4,000 products it didn't carry before, and co-owner Ted Balistreri put the total item count at more than three times the old store's. Checkout lanes doubled from four to eight.
Two changes cut down on waiting. The deli has a kiosk where you scan a QR code to put in a meat and cheese order, then pick it up when you're done with the rest of your list. Curbside pickup runs from the north side of the building.
The mezzanine shows most clearly that this store was built for more than grocery runs. It has glass-walled rooms where staff make mozzarella and fresh pasta and decorate cakes, and both the mozzarella and the pasta will be served in the restaurant. One of the cake decorators recently won a statewide cake decorating award from the Wisconsin Grocers Association. The same level has open seating and small community rooms you can rent. The mezzanine itself is finished in wood from trees cut down on the site.
Tudi's Bar and Restaurant fills the second floor. It's a full-service spot planned around scratch-made casual food like sandwiches, heavy appetizers, pasta, burgers and pizza. The name comes from Salvatore "Ted" Balistreri, who went by Tudi. His four children run the 18-store chain today. On opening day, Ted Balistreri told BizTimes that Tudi's would open the following week. On Sept. 29, WFB Buzz still listed it as imminent. The plan is for the restaurant to close with the store at 9 p.m., though Balistreri said that could change depending on demand.
Village President Kevin Buckley spoke at the opening:
"Sendik's is the beating heart of our village, and this is a love letter to our town."
A restaurant, rentable rooms and a coffee counter all mean longer visits. Longer visits put more weight on the question the village just put on hold.
The meters on Silver Spring Drive cost $83,000 to install in 2019. They bring in about $55,000 a year and cost about $34,000 a year to run, which leaves roughly $21,000. As WFB Buzz pointed out, removing them would shift that gap from the people who park to property taxpayers through the levy. Most trustees seemed to lean toward taking the meters out eventually.
The Business Improvement District unanimously recommended replacing the meters with posted two-hour parking. It also suggested a six-month pilot that would let employees with permits park up to 10 hours on the southbound side of the 5500 blocks of Bay Ridge, Kent, Shoreland, Santa Monica, Berkeley, Diversey and Hollywood, plus part of Consaul. Parking limits for residents would have stayed the same. Residents of the 5500 blocks said their streets already take plenty of district parking, and they raised concerns about getting out of driveways and about trash pickup.
The board didn't vote. Trustees agreed to leave the meters in place and make no changes on the 5400 or 5500 blocks. Their reasoning was that Sendik's construction, one-way traffic on Silver Spring and the coming signal at Consaul Place have the district changing too much for a trial to tell them anything. They plan to take it up again in the coming months, once parking is back on both sides of the street.
Starting tomorrow, Oct. 1, the Silver Spring meters stop taking coins and credit cards, and enforcement continues as usual. The village lists four ways to pay:
The full notice is on the Village of Whitefish Bay website. At the board meeting, one business owner said his customers dislike the meters and keep asking him for coins. That particular request goes away this week.
Employee parking drives much of the debate. The village has 120 designated employee permit spaces and 495 active employee permits. Nobody knows how many of those permits are used on a given day, because they last two years and some holders may no longer work in the district.
Residents, trustees and business owners all pointed out that the 5400 blocks already have no restrictions, so employees can park there all day. A resident informally asked employees along Silver Spring that day, and only one knew. Village staff and businesses were asked to spread the word, possibly with a new map of unrestricted streets. Other ideas raised include changing the Beaumont lots, adding angled parking on streets like Beaumont Avenue and taking a harder look at parking requirements for new buildings.
The village has put more than $3 million in tax incremental financing, plus some bonding, into bike, pedestrian and utility work around the site. That covers curb bump-outs, flashing beacons and new stormwater systems. Public Works Director Matt Collins said the design paid special attention to walkers and bikers. The project also rebuilt the streetscape along East Silver Spring and North Lake Drive and redid North Consaul Place and East Beaumont Avenue for better traffic flow and more parking. In the village's April 2026 public works report, the new signal at Silver Spring and Consaul Place/Diversey Boulevard was a 2026 project. In its Sept. 29 update, WFB Buzz still listed the light as unfinished.
At the northwest corner of the lot, Sendik's plans a small pocket park. The renderings show a triangle of lawn with a curving path, benches among low hedges and shade trees, a black fence along the parking side and a lamppost on the corner. The weather vane from the old store's roof will go there. WFB Buzz describes the spot as somewhere to sit with a coffee or wait for preschool to let out across the street.
At Silver Spring and Lake Drive, a new "Village of Whitefish Bay" monument sign will replace the old one. The CDA, BID, Architectural Review Commission and Village Board all weighed in before settling on one design for village gateway signs:
The private developments are paying for the signs, not the village. A matching sign will replace the one at Silver Spring and Lydell once the Bank of America project there is built "in the coming years." That project, at 131 W. Silver Spring Drive, would replace the Bay Manor apartments with a three-story mixed-use building. The version WFB Buzz described in July had Bank of America and another commercial space on the ground floor, 16 apartments above, 40 parking stalls and a rooftop terrace. WFB Buzz also noted that more sign updates could come with possible changes to Lake Drive and to the Hampton and Santa Monica intersection.
The trustees plan to take up parking again once it's back on both sides of Silver Spring. Until then, the parking you find at the corner is a temporary arrangement for a store built to keep you there longer.
At Kelton Hatton, we follow changes like the Silver Spring corridor block by block, because what happens on a commercial street matters to the homes around it. If you own near Silver Spring Drive and want to know how your home stands this fall, we're happy to talk it through. Request a Free Home Valuation.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
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