Drive south on Main Street NW past Olivet Nazarene University this fall and you'll pass two recent arrivals within a few blocks of each other: a Scooter's Coffee kiosk that opened at 530 S. Main St., and a Chipotle Mexican Grill still going up a few blocks west near the intersection with South Main Street. Both looked, for most of the summer, like ordinary retail arrivals. On September 22, 2026, the Village of Bourbonnais put out a request for proposals for a new Downtown Master Plan covering the corridor those two buildings sit on. The two storefronts aren't background noise to that plan. They're the leading edge of it.
What's Already on the Ground
The Scooter's Coffee build was the more visible of the two projects for most of the year. Construction on the drive-thru began in the 500 block of South Main Street in late March 2026, on a lot across from Chicago Dough Company and Elite Community Credit Union. The franchisee, Thanga Pichaikani, took over the space after joining the Scooter's system in 2024 and told local reporters the buildout stayed on schedule through the spring and summer. The site sits close to Mi Casa Mexican Restaurant, El Burrito Loco, and Twins Sip, in a stretch of Main Street that already carries a mix of small, independently run food businesses. Current listings for the shop show it open and taking orders at that address.
The Chipotle a few blocks north is a newer and slower-moving project. Mayor Jeff Keast confirmed in late June 2026 that construction was starting on the west side of Main Street NW, in the 100 or 200 block, a few blocks west of Olivet Nazarene University and near where Main Street NW meets South Main Street. Because the site fronts a state route, the project needed Illinois Department of Transportation sign-off on the curb cut and drive-through lane, along with a traffic study, before work could begin. Keast said the state came back favorable and that he was hoping for a fall 2026 opening. This will be the region's second Chipotle. The first opened in Bradley on Bradley Boulevard back in October 2017, and Keast was clear the new location has no ownership connection to it.
Neither project required a zoning fight or a public hearing that made headlines. Both simply started building on parcels that already sat inside a business district the Village created years earlier specifically to attract this kind of investment.
The Business District and the New Plan
Bourbonnais has had a formal Main Street Business District on the books since 2020. It covers 252 parcels along the exact frontage where Scooter's and Chipotle are building: Main Street NW (Illinois Route 102) and South Main Street (US 45/52), running from Career Center Road and Briarcliff Lane on the north down to North Street on the south. The district exists to fund infrastructure improvements and offset redevelopment costs in a stretch the Village's own planning documents once described as showing blighting conditions. In practical terms, the designation puts financial tools to support new construction in place along this stretch.
On September 22, 2026, the Village posted a request for proposals seeking a consulting firm to write a new Downtown Master Plan, replacing the plan written in 2010. The corridor the plan covers starts at the corner of South Main Street and University Avenue, directly across from Olivet Nazarene University, and runs north toward The Grove, the Village's outdoor entertainment venue, and south toward West North Street. That's the same stretch of road where Scooter's is already pouring coffee and Chipotle is still pouring concrete.
Village Administrator Michael VanMill described the goal in a report by the Kankakee County Chamber:
"With new development, Olivet Nazarene University and The Grove all playing an important role in this area, we want to create a downtown that feels connected, welcoming and uniquely Bourbonnais."
The RFP spells out what the consultant is being asked to solve: improve walkability and connectivity, link economic activity along the corridor to The Grove, integrate the academic campus and municipal buildings into the same district, and work in new housing where it fits. Firms have until Friday, October 16, 2026, to submit proposals.
Sixteen Years Between Plans
The gap matters. Bourbonnais last wrote a downtown plan in 2010, back when the Village's own description of that document emphasized its traditional architecture, its Second Empire and French-influenced storefronts, and its role as a stop for visitors coming off Chicago Bears training camp and Olivet Nazarene events. That plan predates the business district designation, predates Scooter's, and predates a version of Main Street where a burrito chain needed a state traffic study just to get a drive-through built. Sixteen years is long enough that the corridor the 2010 plan described and the corridor sitting there today aren't quite the same street.
That's the piece easy to miss if you only clock the two new storefronts as separate stories. Scooter's and Chipotle didn't arrive because Main Street got redesigned. The financial tools for redevelopment were already in place, and the 2010 planning document predates both projects. The RFP begins a new planning process for a corridor where development is already underway.
What Isn't Decided Yet
Nothing about the design itself is settled. The Village hasn't named a consultant, hasn't published a draft plan, and hasn't set a public input schedule beyond the October 16 proposal deadline. The RFP language talks about walkability and new housing in general terms, not specific parcels or renderings. Whoever wins the contract will be starting largely from a blank page, working within a corridor that already has two new commercial tenants and an existing business district boundary to work around.
For anyone who drives this stretch regularly, the practical thing to watch isn't the plan's eventual look. It's the sequence: whether the consultant selection comes with the kind of public meetings the Village held for other recent projects, and whether new construction along the corridor slows down while the design work happens or keeps moving in parallel, the way Scooter's and Chipotle did while the RFP was still being drafted. The last time Bourbonnais rewrote a downtown-adjacent plan from scratch, on the Riverfront Park expansion, the acreage was secured well before a design existed to say what it would look like. This corridor may follow the same order: build first, plan around what's already standing.
If you're watching what happens to a specific property along this stretch of Main Street, or want a read on how a corridor redesign like this tends to move property values in a small market over time, Leanne Provost is tracking the plan as it develops and is happy to talk through what it could mean for a particular address.
