Oak Street Is Full. The Gold Coast's Newest Stores Are Landing on Rush.

Of the Gold Coast leases luxury brands have announced since 2024, most of the space sits on Rush Street between Walton and Oak, not on the Oak Street block that has carried the neighborhood's shopping reputation for decades.

Brokers and reporters treat Oak Street as the scarce resource, and that scarcity is pushing growth west. In June 2026, The Real Deal, citing Crain's, described Oak Street as one of the few retail sections in Chicago without high vacancy rates. That scarcity helps account for several of this year's changes on the blocks between Michigan Avenue and State, from what has opened to what is up for sale.

Rush Street, address by address

These are the arrivals and announcements on and right next to Rush, with each one's status as of October 11, 2026. Some lease announcements have not turned into open doors yet, so the status column matters.

NBC Chicago reported that SKIMS opened on Friday, February 6, 2026, in the converted bank at the corner of Rush and Oak. Crain's first reported the plan in March 2025, so it took about eleven months to go from announcement to open store. That is a reasonable yardstick for the other names on this list.

A few doors south, 900 N. Rush is a small building with three tenants whose leases were announced in 2024. In October 2025, The Real Deal reported the 4,200-square-foot building fully leased to Rails, Ganni and Mejuri and called it renewed activity on the corridor. Mejuri's own store locator now lists the 900 N. Rush address. We could not independently confirm that Rails or Ganni are open yet.

The Rush and Walton corner shows how fast space turns over on this side of the district. Glossier left 932 N. Rush in July 2026. In August, Meta confirmed to Axios Chicago that the space would become a Meta Lab, the company's first Midwest store, selling its AI glasses and virtual reality headsets. Across the street, David Yurman signed for about 5,000 square feet in the former Versace space at 933 N. Rush, also addressed as 40–48 E. Walton. That move takes the jeweler off Michigan Avenue at 919 N. Michigan, as The Real Deal reported in January. As of this writing, the brand's store locator still lists its Chicago store on Michigan Avenue.

So in under a year, two corner storefronts emptied by departing brands were re-leased to tenants that are better known nationally. That kind of quick re-leasing usually happens on blocks where tenants are lined up.

What still fits on Oak Street

Oak Street is still adding names, but only where a space happens to open up, and sometimes that space is very small. Store sizes show the difference.

• Prada, 30 E. Oak St.: about 11,000 square feet of retail
• Polène, 116 E. Oak St.: the entire 7,000-square-foot building, on a 10-year lease
• SKIMS, 1000 N. Rush St.: 6,500 square feet, for comparison
• Toteme, 40 E. Oak St.: about 1,100 square feet

Toteme is a Swedish fashion brand, and this will be its first Chicago store. It took a space about one-tenth the size of the Prada flagship down the block. The Real Deal reported on October 9 that the brand was getting ready to build out the space and had not announced a move-in or opening date. When an international brand accepts a footprint that small for its debut, it signals that the address matters more to it than the square footage.

Polène is the larger Oak Street deal, and its timeline is less clear. The Parisian handbag maker signed in June 2025 for the full building at 116 E. Oak, which had been empty for about a year, according to The Real Deal. One tenant took the whole building. Polène's own boutique list, dated February 2026, named New York as its U.S. location and did not include Chicago. We could not confirm that the Oak Street store is open.

Why owners are selling now

If tenants are competing for space, owners of occupied buildings have something buyers will pay for, and several are testing that this year. In June, J. Safra Real Estate put the Prada building at 30 E. Oak on the market. Crain's sources expected it to sell for about $30 million, according to The Real Deal. The same report said L3 Capital had hired a broker in April to sell 1000 N. Rush, the converted bank that SKIMS now leases.

The SKIMS building went up for sale about ten weeks after the store opened. The owner got a well-known tenant into a former bank on a prominent corner, then put it on the market almost right away. The Real Deal tied the timing of these listings directly to Oak Street's low vacancy, writing that the high-end corridor's steady occupancy despite market headwinds "has led several owners to test the selling waters."

The Real Deal also noted that details of Prada's lease, including its length, were not available. The listings show that owners consider occupied buildings on these blocks worth putting on the market.

The calendar from here to 2028

The coming months bring a series of dates that will shape how the district looks:

1. Before the holidays: Meta Lab is due to open at 932 N. Rush "ahead of the holiday shopping season," according to Axios. No exact date has been announced.
2. Saturday, November 21, 2026: The Wintrust Magnificent Mile Lights Festival parade starts at Oak Street and Michigan Avenue at 5:30 p.m. and heads south on Michigan. Lights Festival Lane runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
3. To be determined: Toteme's opening at 40 E. Oak, Polène at 116 E. Oak, and David Yurman's move to 933 N. Rush have no confirmed public dates yet.
4. 2027 to 2028: MetLife's roughly $170 million overhaul of Water Tower Place is scheduled to start construction in 2027 and finish in 2028. It will be built in phases so current tenants can stay open, the Chicago Sun-Times reported in April.

The parade route says something about the district's layout. The Magnificent Mile's biggest night of the year starts at the corner where the Gold Coast's shopping blocks begin, and new stores near that corner, such as SKIMS at Rush and Oak, sit right where the crowd gathers.

Water Tower Place is the one item on this list that could change the picture. The Sun-Times reported that the plan moves retail onto floors one through three around a new atrium and puts office and medical tenants on floors four through eight. It targets women's specialty, apparel, beauty and experiential retailers, and about 10 storefronts are currently empty. Cafes and bars are planned for the former Foodlife mezzanine, and talks are underway with Chicago restaurant operators the paper did not name. No incoming retail tenants had been announced as of that April report.

Many of the shoppers MetLife is targeting are the same ones that brought Toteme and SKIMS to Oak and Rush. Once those ten storefronts are rebuilt, a brand that cannot find a spot on Oak Street will have another option a few blocks south. Until then, Rush Street is where most of the growth is happening. This holiday season, the newest storefronts in the neighborhood will mostly be on the half-block of Rush between Walton and Oak, not on Oak Street.

Every new lease, building sale or empty corner changes how the Gold Coast blocks around it feel, and buyers ask about that when they look at the vintage buildings and row homes nearby. The Lowe Group tracks these changes closely. If you would like to know how the shift toward Rush Street affects the value of a home a few blocks from Oak and Rush, Let's Connect.