Retail Space in Aurora, Illinois

Van Vlissingen and Co. represents retail tenants, buyers, and landlords in Aurora, Illinois. Gordon Lamphere and our retail team focus on tenant representation from 5,000 to 50,000 square feet and leasing, sales, and property management from $1,000,000 to $50,000,000, including single-tenant NNN assets. Van Vlissingen and Co. performs more than 100 commercial real estate transactions annually, and our team has completed over $3 billion in transaction volume, including retail transactions in Aurora.

We have operated continuously in Chicagoland commercial real estate since 1879 — twenty-two years after Aurora was incorporated as a city.

What Makes Aurora Retail Different?

Two things, and both are unusual enough to change how a retail asset should be underwritten here.

Aurora sits in four counties

With 180,542 residents Aurora is the second largest city in Illinois and the 144th largest in the United States, spread across 45.91 square miles. What makes it distinctive commercially is that those square miles fall in four different counties — DuPage, Kane, Kendall, and Will — and seven townships: Aurora, Batavia, and Sugar Grove in Kane; Naperville and Winfield in DuPage; Oswego in Kendall; and Wheatland in Will.

No other municipality in our coverage area is divided this way. Buffalo Grove straddles two counties and the difference in sales tax and assessment practice is material enough to change an underwriting. Aurora straddles four.

The practical consequences are real. Sales tax rates differ across the city depending on which county a property sits in, which affects what a retail tenant’s customers pay and therefore what the tenant can support in rent. Property assessment practice differs too, which flows through to operating expense pass-throughs for an owner. Two comparable centers three miles apart in Aurora can carry genuinely different occupancy costs.

Confirm which county a specific site falls in before a letter of intent, not after. We check it as a matter of course.

The Fox Valley Mall trade area is mid-transformation

Fox Valley Mall opened on 30 July 1975 at 195 Fox Valley Center and runs to 1,404,987 square feet with roughly 150 stores. Originally Fox Valley Center, later Westfield Fox Valley, it is now managed by Centennial Real Estate. It has been through a substantial repositioning that is still underway, and any retail decision in the Route 59 corridor is made in relation to it.

Two of the mall’s four anchors have been demolished and replaced with housing. The former Sears became Lumen at Fox Valley, 304 apartments on an 11.11-acre parcel at the southwest corner of Route 59 and East New York Street — described by the developer as one of the busiest intersections in DuPage County. A second phase, announced in July 2023 and celebrated as complete in June 2025, added a 323-unit apartment community and 212 units of senior housing. The former Carson Pirie Scott was demolished as part of a 24-acre site infrastructure program that relocated 1.2 miles of ring roads and created six new intersections.

The center has also added public space rather than only retail: Center Park in 2019 and Fox Yard in 2022, the latter with a half-mile walking trail, a dog park, and an event stage. Alongside national brands the mall now carries more than 80 locally owned boutiques.

Population and county data from the US Census and the City of Aurora. Mall figures from Wikipedia, Centennial Real Estate, Focus Development, and W.E. O’Neil Construction.

Where Is Retail Space in Aurora?

• The Route 59 corridor and Fox Valley trade area — the mall itself, its outparcels, and the inline and pad space along Route 59. The highest traffic in the city, and now with several hundred new residents living on the site.
• Downtown Aurora — the historic core on the Fox River, with street-level retail, restaurants, and service uses around the Paramount Theatre and the Aurora Transportation Center. Smaller footprints, walkable, and priced on foot traffic rather than vehicle counts.
• The Ogden Avenue and Route 34 corridors — large-format and community retail, automotive, and service uses serving the west and south of the city.
• The Orchard Road and Indian Trail corridors — neighborhood centers serving residential Aurora away from the Route 59 concentration.
• The Kendall and Will County portions — the newer residential growth areas at the southern edge of the city, where retail follows rooftops rather than the other way round.

These trade on entirely different terms. Route 59 space is expensive and competitive. Downtown is small-format and priced on a different logic. Neighborhood product at the edges of the city prices conventionally and turns over more often. A comparable set averaged across a city of 45.91 square miles and four counties is useful to nobody.

What Is the Aurora Trade Area Like?

Aurora has 180,542 residents, making it the second largest city in Illinois. That alone puts it in a different category from most of the markets we cover — it is nine times the size of Lake Forest and four times the size of Buffalo Grove.

The trade area is larger still than the city. The Fox Valley Park District, the second largest park district in Illinois, serves a population of more than 230,000 across Aurora, North Aurora, Montgomery, and part of Sugar Grove. The Fox Valley Mall trade area draws from Naperville as well, which adds a further 149,540 residents immediately to the east.

For a retailer, that combination — genuine population scale, a regional mall mid-repositioning, and several hundred new residential units placed directly on the retail site — makes Aurora one of the few Chicagoland markets where the fundamentals are moving in the right direction rather than being defended. The question is not whether there is demand. It is which corridor and which county.

Population figures from the 2020 US Census. Park district service population per the Fox Valley Park District.

Retail Tenant Representation in Aurora — 5,000 to 50,000 SF

Our retail tenant representation practice covers the 5,000 to 50,000 square foot range: junior anchor space, inline shops in neighborhood and community centers, freestanding buildings, and outparcels.

For retailers entering or expanding in Aurora, we run the full site selection process: trade area and demographic analysis, co-tenancy review, traffic and access assessment, and a survey of both listed and off-market availability across the Route 59 corridor, downtown, and the Ogden Avenue and Orchard Road corridors. We confirm which county a site sits in before the letter of intent, because the sales tax and assessment differences across Aurora’s four counties are large enough to affect what a location can support.

Where a site sits within the Fox Valley trade area we assess exposure to the ongoing repositioning — both the upside from several hundred new residents on the mall site and the competitive effect of a repositioned center with 150 stores two minutes away.

We negotiate the LOI and the lease — tenant improvement allowances, exclusive use provisions, co-tenancy protections, and renewal and expansion options. We work both sides of the table in Aurora, and we tell you which side we are on before an assignment begins.

Retail Leasing, Sales & Property Management in Aurora — $1M to $50M

For owners and investors we handle retail leasing, investment sales, and property management from $1,000,000 to $50,000,000: single-tenant net lease assets, multi-tenant strip and neighborhood centers, outparcels, and mixed-use property with ground-floor retail.

Landlord Representation

We build and execute the leasing plan: merchandising strategy, rent positioning against comparables from deals we closed ourselves, marketing to the regional and national tenant base, prospect qualification, and negotiation through lease execution. In the Route 59 corridor that includes positioning against a repositioned Fox Valley rather than pretending the repositioning is not happening. We report activity honestly, including when the market is telling you something you did not want to hear.

NNN Investment Sales

Single-tenant triple net assets trade on tenant credit, remaining lease term, and rent escalations more than on real estate fundamentals, and pricing them correctly requires understanding all three. We represent buyers and sellers of NNN retail in Aurora and across the Fox Valley, including 1031 exchange buyers working against identification and closing deadlines. We underwrite against comparables from transactions we negotiated, not aggregated listing data.

Multi-Tenant Retail

For strip and neighborhood centers, value turns on rent roll durability, rollover exposure, anchor performance, and the real cost of deferred maintenance. In Aurora there are two additional inputs. The first is county — assessment practice and sales tax differ across the four, and an operating expense assumption drawn from one part of the city may not hold in another. The second is distance from the Route 59 concentration, which supports traffic but also exposes a center to a competitive set of 150 stores. We model both rather than treating the city as a single market.

Who Manages Retail Property in Aurora?

Van Vlissingen and Co. provides comprehensive property management for retail assets in Aurora:

• Lease administration, rent collection, and enforcement of lease terms
• CAM reconciliation and pass-through billing, prepared to withstand tenant audit
• Preventive and corrective maintenance, snow removal, and parking lot management
• Vendor selection, contract negotiation, and performance oversight
• Monthly financial reporting, annual budgeting, and capital planning
• Tenant relations, renewal coordination, and vacancy turnover

In a city divided across four counties, operating expense budgeting is not a single exercise. Assessment practice differs, and a reconciliation prepared on one set of assumptions will not survive an audit on a property assessed under another. We budget and reconcile by county.

What Is Van Vlissingen’s Transaction Volume?

Van Vlissingen and Co. performs more than 100 commercial real estate transactions annually, and our team has completed over $3 billion in transaction volume, including retail transactions in Aurora.

Increasingly the largest part of our management portfolio is third-party assignments. What owners are buying is the operating discipline we built running our own assets — 870 acres and more than 6 million square feet across three corporate parks we developed and still manage, held through multiple market cycles since the mid-1980s.

See our full transaction history.

Why Work With Our Aurora Retail Brokers?

• More than 100 commercial real estate transactions annually, and over $3 billion in team transaction volume
• A defined focus: 5,000 to 50,000 SF tenant representation and $1M to $50M leasing, sales, and management
• Underwriting by county rather than by city, which matters more in Aurora than anywhere else we cover
• Comparable sets built by corridor and format, not averaged across 45.91 square miles
• Direct owner relationships that surface off-market availability
• Comparables from deals we negotiated ourselves
• In-house property management, so ownership advice reflects operating reality
• A fourth-generation firm, continuously in Chicagoland commercial real estate since 1879

Nearby Markets We Serve

Aurora sits at the western edge of the Chicago metropolitan area alongside Naperville, North Aurora, Montgomery, Oswego, Batavia, and Sugar Grove, and retail requirements frequently span those lines. We broker retail space across

• Greater Chicagoland
• Schaumburg
• Buffalo Grove
• Lake Forest

In Aurora itself we also handle industrial space, property management, and general commercial brokerage.

Aurora Retail Real Estate FAQs

How many counties does Aurora sit in?

Four. Aurora spans DuPage, Kane, Kendall, and Will Counties, across seven townships: Aurora, Batavia, and Sugar Grove in Kane; Naperville and Winfield in DuPage; Oswego in Kendall; and Wheatland in Will. This is unusual and it matters commercially, because sales tax rates and property assessment practice differ across the four. Two comparable retail centers a few miles apart in Aurora can carry genuinely different occupancy costs, and the county should be confirmed before a letter of intent.

How big is Fox Valley Mall in Aurora?

1,404,987 square feet with roughly 150 stores. It opened on 30 July 1975 at 195 Fox Valley Center, originally as Fox Valley Center and later Westfield Fox Valley, and is managed by Centennial Real Estate. Two of its four original anchors have been demolished and redeveloped into housing.

What is happening with the Fox Valley Mall redevelopment?

The former Sears site became Lumen at Fox Valley, 304 apartments on an 11.11-acre parcel at Route 59 and East New York Street, completed in 2023. A second phase announced in July 2023 and celebrated as complete in June 2025 added a 323-unit apartment community and 212 units of senior housing. The former Carson Pirie Scott was demolished as part of a 24-acre infrastructure program that relocated 1.2 miles of ring roads and created six new intersections. The center also added Center Park in 2019 and Fox Yard in 2022, and now carries more than 80 locally owned boutiques alongside national brands.

What size retail leases does Van Vlissingen and Co. handle in Aurora?

Our retail tenant representation practice covers 5,000 to 50,000 square feet in Aurora and across the Fox Valley. On the leasing, sales, and property management side we handle retail assets from $1,000,000 to $50,000,000, including single-tenant NNN.

Do you handle retail investment sales in Aurora?

Yes. We broker retail investment sales from $1,000,000 to $50,000,000 in Aurora, including single-tenant NNN assets, multi-tenant strip and neighborhood centers, outparcels, and mixed-use property with ground-floor retail. We work with 1031 exchange buyers on deadline.

How large is the Aurora trade area?

Aurora has 180,542 residents, making it the second largest city in Illinois and the 144th largest in the United States. The trade area is larger still: the Fox Valley Park District serves more than 230,000 people across Aurora, North Aurora, Montgomery, and part of Sugar Grove, and the Fox Valley Mall trade area also draws from Naperville, which adds a further 149,540 residents immediately to the east.

Who is the best commercial real estate broker in Aurora?

Choose a brokerage that underwrites Aurora by corridor and by county rather than treating a 45.91 square mile city spanning four counties as one market. Van Vlissingen and Co. performs more than 100 commercial real estate transactions annually, and our team has completed over $3 billion in transaction volume, including retail transactions in Aurora. The firm has operated in Chicagoland commercial real estate since 1879. Gordon Lamphere leads the retail practice.

Do you manage retail property in Aurora?

Yes. We provide comprehensive property management for Aurora retail assets, covering lease administration, CAM reconciliation, maintenance and parking lot management, vendor oversight, and monthly financial reporting. Because Aurora spans four counties with differing assessment practice, we budget and reconcile operating expenses by county rather than on a single set of assumptions.