Why There Are Suddenly Survey Stakes All Over the Sunnyland Plaza Parking Lot

If you drive Washington Road past Summit Drive and noticed orange flags planted in the cracked asphalt this summer, you weren't imagining a change. That lot, the one most residents still call by its old name even though the sign says Washington Plaza, is in the middle of the biggest investment the city has made in it in decades.

The Washington City Council approved a development agreement in June 2026 that puts roughly $500,000 of city money behind a 12-acre, nearly 100,000-square-foot shopping center that turns more than 50 years old this year. The headline items are a new quarter-acre green space and a resurfaced parking lot, but the more interesting story is who is actually writing the checks, and why the city decided this particular strip of asphalt was worth the trouble.

The Corner Everyone Still Calls By Its Old Name

Washington Plaza has been through a rough stretch before. By 2007, the center had shrunk to just two or three operating businesses, a low point that longtime residents remember even if the plaza's current mix, anchored by Dollar General and the AMC Classic Sunnyland 10 movie theater, looks healthier today. The Washington District Library's Sunnyland branch has operated out of the plaza since 2002, which means the center has quietly functioned as one of the town's few one-stop spots for a movie, a library run, and a dollar-store errand in the same parking lot.

That branch name is the tell. Ward 2 Alderperson Jamie Smith has said she would like the whole property to go back to being called Sunnyland Plaza, the name most people already use out of habit. The catch is that renaming a privately owned shopping center isn't the city's call to make. It belongs to the owner, Sam Tayabali of Washington Plaza Management, which says something about how this whole project works: the city can shape the site, subsidize the fixes, and lean on the owner to hold up his end, but naming rights and day-to-day tenant decisions still sit with the private side of the ledger.

Who Is Actually Paying For the Comeback

Read the plan closely and the redevelopment stops looking like a story about a shopping center reinventing itself and starts looking like a story about a city government deciding to underwrite a private landlord's overdue maintenance. Washington is installing new water, electric, sanitary sewer and stormwater infrastructure at the plaza. It is also handing over a $50,000 business improvement grant specifically for parking lot resurfacing and setting up a revolving loan fund of up to $85,000 for site improvements. The city expects to recoup its infrastructure costs through a proposed Business Development District that would add a 0.25 percent sales tax at the plaza.

In exchange, Tayabali's company is on the hook for tackling the worst sections of the pothole-riddled lot immediately, installing security cameras that the Washington Police Department can monitor remotely around the clock, and contributing to stormwater drainage and detention work. The agreement gives both sides two years to complete their obligations, so the construction cones and striped-off sections you see this fall are the early phase, not the finished product.

Alderperson Brandon Moss, who represents Ward 3 and pushed the deal through the Economic Development Commission, framed it as a deliberate choice to spread the town's civic attention beyond its most obvious center of gravity.

"Everything is not just the square, the Walmart-Freedom Parkway area. It's an area worth revitalizing or reinvesting in."

That line matters because it names the actual tension in the project. Washington's historic downtown square already reads as the town's civic living room, with brick storefronts and a built-in gathering feel. The plaza on Washington Road never had that. It was built as a shopping center, full stop, with parking where a gathering space should be. The quarter-acre green space is the first attempt to give that corridor something the square has had all along.

What the Green Space Is Actually For

The agreement describes the new green space as land that can be used by families and for events, which is a modest way of saying the plaza is getting its first real public gathering spot in over 50 years of operation. A shopping center that houses a movie theater and a library branch has, until now, offered nowhere to sit outside that wasn't a parking space. The green space and the security camera coverage are meant to work together: give people a reason to linger, and give the police a way to keep an eye on the area while they do.

The Rest of the Fall Calendar Isn't Waiting on Construction

While the plaza project plays out over the next two years, the town's other entertainment anchor is already running a full fall schedule. Five Points Washington, the 144,900-square-foot multipurpose facility on North Wilmor Road that opened in 2007, houses the 1,020-seat Caterpillar Performing Arts Theater and has a run of concerts booked through October.

None of that calendar depends on how fast the plaza's parking lot gets patched. It's a reminder that Washington's civic life doesn't run through a single address. It runs through at least three: the square, the plaza corridor on Washington Road, and Five Points Washington off Wilmor Road, each doing a different job for residents on a given weekend.

Bernardi's Turns 25 While a New Wave Moves In

The dining scene tells a similar two-track story. Bernardi's Restaurant, at 2137 Washington Road on the same corridor as the plaza, marked its 25th anniversary this past July, the kind of longevity that makes a restaurant a fixture rather than a novelty. Down on the Main Street side of town, a newer wave of openings has been filling in storefronts closer to the square: Tangled Roots Craft Beer & Kitchen, Sunny Side Street, Pickled Radish Provisions, Saffron Social, and W Down Under have all become names locals mention when someone asks where to eat that isn't a chain.

That split mirrors the plaza story almost exactly. The newer, more design-forward spots have clustered near downtown, while the Washington Road corridor has leaned on an established anchor and, until this year, hadn't seen much fresh investment. The plaza project is effectively an attempt to give that stretch of town the same kind of pull the Main Street corridor has built organically.

What This Means If You Live Near the Plaza

For residents who use the Sunnyland library branch, catch a movie at the AMC Classic Sunnyland 10, or just cut through that lot on the way to Dollar General, expect a couple of years of visible but manageable disruption. The worst sections of the parking lot are supposed to get fixed first, the security cameras are part of the deal rather than an afterthought, and the green space is designed with families and events in mind rather than as decorative landscaping. Whether the sign out front eventually says Sunnyland Plaza again is still an open question, and one that belongs to the property owner, not the city council.

What's clear is that Washington isn't consolidating its civic energy into one showcase project this year. It's placing bets in three different spots at once, betting that a strip mall parking lot, a performing arts theater, and a stretch of new restaurants can each pull their own weight in the same small town.

If you're weighing a move to this part of Central Illinois, or you already call Washington home and want a read on how a neighborhood is actually trending before you make a decision about your own house, the team at The Move Smart Group knows these corridors block by block. Schedule a free consultation and we'll walk you through what we're seeing on the ground.