For years, the Long Grove downtown calendar had a shape locals could recite in their sleep. Irish Days over Labor Day. Apple Fest three weekends later. In between, a lot of quiet brick sidewalk and a Saturday errand that could just as easily be run in Buffalo Grove.
That shape has changed this year, and the change is the kind you only notice if you already live here. Two storefronts reopened in May. Buffalo Creek Brewing's fall programming keeps expanding. The Robert Parker Coffin bridge and the streetlights that went in a few years ago are finally doing what infrastructure is supposed to do, which is give people a reason to linger on a Wednesday. This is a guide to the next six weeks written for the people who will actually walk them.
The gap that used to sit between the two festivals
Historic Downtown Long Grove holds around 120 businesses across the district, and as the village's own economic development page notes, it was the first historic district in Illinois when the ordinance passed in 1960. That density is why the festival weekends work. It is also why the non-festival weekends used to feel thin. If you were not going to a specific shop, there was no obvious reason to park at Fountain Square on a Tuesday afternoon.
The village has spent the last several years quietly addressing that. Village President Bill Jacob told the Daily Herald in May that the current run of new openings traces back to the streetscape work, the sidewalks and streetlights, and the bridge renovation. His phrasing was blunt: there were no public sidewalks, there were no streetlights until a few years ago. That is the sort of detail that reads as trivia until you notice you can now walk from the Mill Pond to Old McHenry Road after dark without picking your way through gravel.
Irish Days, September 5 through 7
Irish Days runs Saturday, September 5 through Monday, September 7 this year, and if you have lived here a while you already know the shape of it. If you have not been in a couple of years, the lineup has firmed up in ways worth planning around.
The Saturday evening headliner is Without U2. Sunday's is The Dirty Wellies. The Shannon Rovers Irish Pipe Band, the traditional Irish dance schools, the Best Men's Legs in a Kilt Contest, and the Irish Dog Contest are all back, along with the Lions Club's Fibber MaGee pub and Irish-inspired food from Rep's Place. Admission and municipal-lot parking are free, which is easy to forget if you are used to the paid-ticket structure at Chocolate Fest or Apple Fest.
A resident tip that does not appear on the flyer: the Irish Dog Contest registers day-of at the competition area near the ticket booth, and costumed dogs get the votes. If your golden retriever owns a small green bowtie, this is the weekend it earns its keep.
The two doors that changed the in-between weekends
The most consequential Long Grove news of 2026 did not happen at a festival. It happened on Sunday, May 3, when two storefronts held a joint grand opening a block apart.
Artistic Creations of Long Grove at 405 Robert Parker Coffin Road is a handmade and artisan goods shop, and The Olive Tap at 302 Old McHenry Road is an olive oil and balsamic vinegar tasting emporium. Artistic Creations is run by Ellen Glassman, who spent close to four decades at Allstate before opening the store. The Olive Tap has a longer arc: the business first opened in Long Grove in 2006, moved across the street to a larger space, closed around 2021 when the original owners moved to Colorado, and has now been reopened by Kelly Petrocelli, who lives in Long Grove and worked at both the original store and the Colorado locations.
What makes these two openings matter more than a typical retail refresh is what they do to the middle of the district. A tasting emporium is a destination on a random Thursday in a way that a boutique often is not. You can bring a visiting sibling for a twenty-minute stop and leave with something for dinner. Multiply that by the roughly 120 downtown businesses already open seven days a week, and the gap between festivals starts to look less like a gap.
Buffalo Creek as the weeknight anchor
If Irish Days is the group event and Apple Fest is the family event, Buffalo Creek Brewing at 360 Historical Lane is the thing you do on a Thursday without planning it. The taproom is built into the former Art Studio of the Long Grove Academy of Fine Arts and includes a Bavarian-themed taproom, biergarten, event room, patio, and scenic lawns, with capacity above 350 people. The current Yelp-listed hours run weekday evenings starting at 4 p.m., with Wednesday and Thursday opening at noon, Friday until 11 p.m., and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Two things worth knowing for the next six weeks. First, the brewery does not run a full in-house kitchen, and it explicitly welcomes outside food, with rotating food trucks on the ad board. Ordering from a Kildeer or Lake Zurich spot and eating in the biergarten is a completely normal move. Second, the fall calendar is more programmed than casual visitors realize. Buffalo Creek Alpine Fest returns later in the year with the seasonal Weizenbock and the Russian Imperial Stout the taproom leans on for its boozy hot chocolate. If you have been meaning to try the Hallows, this is the stretch.
Apple Fest, September 25 through 27
Apple Fest is the weekend that pulls twenty-five thousand people into a village of roughly eighty-six hundred. If you live inside a mile of Robert Parker Coffin Road, you already know that Friday afternoon through Sunday evening is a different traffic reality. A few specifics worth pinning to the fridge:
- The festival is spread through the downtown business district around the intersection of Robert Parker Coffin and Old McHenry Roads.
- Free shuttle service runs Saturday and Sunday only, from the Golf Dome Parking Lot at 801 McHenry Road in Buffalo Grove to Archer Road between Fountain Square and the carnival. There is no shuttle on Friday.
- Admission covers the festival footprint. Food, drinks, and carnival rides are separate. Coolers are not permitted; water bottles and baby food or formula are.
- More than twenty brick-and-mortar shops open through the weekend, and many run apple-themed merchandise alongside the vendor booths.
The under-covered piece is what happens Friday between noon and about 4 p.m. That window is the closest Apple Fest gets to feeling like a normal Long Grove afternoon: full downtown, live music warming up, most of the carnival open, and none of the Saturday parking pressure. Residents who want to do the fest without doing the crowd should treat Friday as the actual event.
A working six-week rhythm
Put it on a single mental page. Labor Day weekend belongs to Irish Days. The two weekends after that are the ones the district has never really owned, and this is the year to test whether the new openings change that. Walk down to The Olive Tap on a Thursday. Take out-of-town guests to Buffalo Creek on a Sunday afternoon instead of driving them into the city. Save Apple Fest Friday for yourself and Apple Fest Sunday for whoever is visiting.
The larger point is that the district has crossed a threshold most residents have not fully registered. When Kelly Petrocelli, back running The Olive Tap after her time in Colorado, told the Daily Herald that she has seen Long Grove go up and down and that it is on the upswing again, she was describing what long-term residents feel without quite naming. The next six weeks are the first real test of the upswing outside of a festival footprint.
For those thinking further ahead than the fall calendar, the health of a downtown district is one of the more honest signals of where a village's real estate is headed. If you would like to talk through what that looks like in Long Grove or in the neighboring markets we work in across Kildeer, Hawthorn Woods, and Buffalo Grove, the team at Renee Clark Homes is here when you are ready. Let's Connect.
