Durty Nellie’s closes in Palatine after 54 years, with Big Grove Brewery next in line

Durty Nellie’s, the Irish pub and concert venue at 180 N. Smith St. in Palatine, closed for good at the end of business on Sunday, October 4, 2026, after 54 years in the northwest suburb. Customers sat around the bar with football on the TVs for one last Sunday at the pub, a short walk from the Palatine Metra station, the Daily Herald reported.

The building won’t sit empty for long. Iowa-based Big Grove Brewery has a contract to buy the property and won village approval in September to turn the space into a restaurant, taproom and small brewery. The concert stage is coming out, and the company is aiming to open in 2027.

For downtown Palatine, the change ends a long run of live music next to the train tracks. Here is the venue’s history at a glance.

• Durty Nellie’s opened in 1972 at 55 N. Bothwell St. in downtown Palatine.
• The pub moved to its final home at 180 N. Smith St. in 2003.
• A kitchen fire on January 25, 2019, closed the venue for months, and the pandemic hit soon after the reopening.
• A 2023 plan to tear down the building for a six-story apartment project stalled over parking.
• The last call came at the end of business on October 4, 2026.

A last call announced in September

The owners said on social media in September that the pub would close permanently after business on October 4, according to a September 23 Daily Herald story. The post thanked patrons for years of support, invited people to stop in and say goodbye to co-owner Jim Dolezal, the family and the staff, and signed off with the Irish toast “Slainte.”

On the final day, customers chanted the name of bartender Betty West and traded memories of Irish step-dancing classes in the basement and the old upstairs dance club. Dolezal called the place “the heart of this community” and ran through the events held there over the years: fundraisers, reunions, weddings, bar mitzvahs, celebrations of life and St. Patrick’s Day parties. A customer recalled to the Daily Herald that a couple of commercial airline pilots started the bar and named the place after a centuries-old pub in Ireland, then sold the business to Jim Dolezal and his late brother, Mark Dolezal, in 1988.

For suburban music fans, Durty Nellie’s was a rare chance to see real concerts near a Metra stop, Axios Chicago noted. The stage hosted touring acts including Violent Femmes, Gin Blossoms and the Jonas Brothers, along with local bands and cover acts.

Why the 18,000-square-foot room got hard to fill

The trouble started with a fire. On January 25, 2019, flames broke out in the kitchen just after 10 a.m. while six employees were getting ready to open, and all of them got out unhurt, NBC Chicago reported. A gas line at the back of the building fed the fire until the gas supply was shut off.

The fire destroyed the kitchen and forced a closure of several months, and the concert business stopped when the pandemic arrived shortly after the reopening, ABC7 Chicago reported in April 2023. By then the room was too small for most national acts and too big for most local bands, the station said. “It’s hard to fill this place, so it’s empty a lot of the time,” Jim Dolezal told ABC7. Axios put the size of the space at 18,000 square feet.

The apartment plan that stalled over parking

The owners’ answer was to start over. Palatine’s planning commission voted 6-0 on April 4, 2023, to recommend a preliminary planned development for a six-story, 81-foot mixed-use building with 85 rental apartments, ground-floor commercial space and an enclosed rooftop amenity area, according to the commission’s minutes. Architect Jim Tinaglia drew the plans, and Jonathan Payne, a Tennessee-based developer, was the owners’ partner.

The village council split 3-3 on April 17, 2023, and Mayor Jim Schwantz broke the tie to grant preliminary approval, the Daily Herald reported. Council members wanted to know where tenants would park, and council member Brad Helms said giving up public spaces in the nearby garage, which commuters rely on, was not an option.

The plan would have put a 3,500-square-foot Durty Nellie’s on the ground floor alongside the bank already on the property, with a smaller rooftop pub above. Village code called for 170 off-street spaces for the apartments and 33 for the commercial tenants, but the proposal had 30 surface spaces plus 68 in the Gateway Center parking deck. In February 2024, Village Manager Reid Ottesen said at the annual State of the Village event that the project looked very unlikely to go forward, the Daily Herald reported. Payne was unable to meet the village’s parking requirements, the paper reported in August 2026.

What Big Grove plans for 180 N. Smith St.

Big Grove is taking a different approach: remodel the building instead of tearing it down. The company has a contract to buy the property, and the remodel is estimated at more than $4.5 million, according to village documents cited in that August Daily Herald story.

Palatine’s planning and zoning commission voted 9-0 on August 25, 2026, to recommend an amendment to the Gateway Center planned development and a special use for a restaurant and bar with a brewery, an expanded outdoor patio and new signs, the commission’s minutes show. CEO Matthew Swift and chief operating officer Mike Wehr described a patio of about 9,000 square feet for 250 people, indoor seating for 250 to 300 and a brewery making 200 to 300 barrels a year.

The first floor gets the biggest change. The stage will be torn out to make room for brewing, and the second floor will mostly host private events such as weddings and corporate parties, the Daily Herald reported from that meeting. Wehr said other Big Grove locations have music on a small scale. The Palatine taproom won’t be a live music venue, Axios Chicago reported. Wehr also said Big Grove plans to keep the boulder outside the building that honors Ted Nugent’s mother.

On September 8, 2026, the village council passed four ordinances for the project on a 6-0 roll call: the planned development amendment, the special use, a redevelopment agreement with Big Grove’s real estate company and one added Class N microbrewery liquor license, according to the council minutes. The village’s liquor commission approved Big Grove’s Class N license application the same night, its minutes show.

The redevelopment agreement lets Big Grove draw up to $1.75 million in tax increment financing, and the village will put in up to $100,000 more to move the right-in, right-out entrance on Smith Street, the Daily Herald reported. Plans call for a full kitchen and a relocated bar on the first floor and five to seven rotating taplines brewed on site. Planned hours are 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays and 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekends.

Restaurateurs Matt and Faye Swift started Big Grove in Solon, Iowa, in 2013, according to the business plan the company submitted to the village, as the Daily Herald reported in August. The company’s own site lists a Solon brewpub, taprooms in Iowa City, Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, Iowa, in Omaha, Nebraska, and in Prairie Village, Kansas, plus a coffee shop, and no Illinois location yet. Several steps remain before the Palatine taproom can open.

• Exterior sound amplification and lighting plans still need village review during the building permit process.
• Revisions to the surface parking lot layout are also due during building permit review.
• The village won’t issue the liquor license until the restaurant is ready to open, Ottesen said in September.
• Wehr told the council he hopes to open in summer 2027.
• The redevelopment agreement requires the work to be done and the restaurant open by December 31, 2027.

Getting to the Smith Street building

The train was a big part of the pitch for the brewery, and Helms said at the September meeting that having the venue within sight of the tracks would be a draw, the Daily Herald reported. These are the transit and parking options near the building.

• The Palatine Metra station at 137 W. Wood St. is on the Union Pacific Northwest line, between the Arlington Park and Barrington stops, with trains to Ogilvie Transportation Center in downtown Chicago.
• Metra lists 12 lots and 1,368 spaces at the station, including 990 daily spaces and 21 accessible spaces, on its station page.
• The Gateway Center parking deck sits next to the property, and ABC7 Chicago described it in 2023 as a large city-owned garage.

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