New Buona Beef to replace old one in Hoffman Estates

Fans of the Buona Beef restaurant in Hoffman Estates' Barrington Square Town Center will face a monthlong withdrawal from their favorite food later this year, but it could have been worse.

The initial expectation was that there would be a two-month gap between the teardown of the existing 20-year-old restaurant along Higgins Road and the opening of a new one immediately to the west.

But during a meeting at company headquarters Tuesday morning, project leaders were directed to seek any way to cut that hiatus in half, project manager John Sigalos said.

The expedited time frame is hoped to make customers happy as well as ease the ability to retain employees during the downtime.

The purpose of the construction and demolition is to replace the old building with one that looks and operates better, including the addition of a dual-lane drive-through that only four other Buona Beefs have, he added.

"There's a newer, more modern, more efficient prototype building being introduced throughout the Chicago area," Sigalos said.

Though the updated design has been the one recently used for new locations, the Hoffman Estates project will be the first instance of an old building being replaced by it, he said.

Construction of the new building is expected to start about mid-April and last four months before the old building will be closed and demolished.

A gap of some length is inevitable to switch the utilities over and transfer some existing equipment from one building to the other, Sigalos said.

The project also necessitated the owner of Barrington Square Town Center and Hoffman Estates to resubdivide the 28-acre property to identify where future outlots might be.

The new Buona Beef restaurant will occupy just under an acre. A former McDonald's left behind a 0.77-acre site while the new one occupies a 1.12-acre site.

The main building of Barrington Square and the entrance roads together occupy 11.17 acres, while a former Menard's building and its parking lie on 7.24 acres.

A 1.21-acre lot has already been identified as a future retail site while another 0.66-acre site also has been earmarked for future development.