Homes in Downers Grove Near the Metra Train Station

Downers Grove has three stations on Metra's BNSF Line: Main Street in downtown, Fairview Avenue, and Belmont, which serves the Belmont Road crossing west of downtown.

Main Street is the station most commuters picture when they think of Downers Grove. It opened in 1911, it sits on Main Street in the middle of the downtown business district, and the Village of Downers Grove owns it and manages its parking lots. As of 2025 it was the sixth busiest of Metra's 236 stations outside downtown Chicago, averaging 1,530 weekday boardings. The station is in Metra fare zone 4, and its building is open weekdays from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. and weekends from 7 a.m. to noon. Pace route 834 connects with the station for riders who come in by bus.

Fairview Avenue is in fare zone 3. Its station building, with a colonial barn-type design, replaced the original East Grove station in 1916, and it's open weekdays from 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. and closed on weekends. The official address is on Fairview and Burlington avenues, but the main parking lot is on the south side of the tracks off Second Street.

What is the BNSF commute to Chicago like?

The BNSF Line connects Downers Grove directly with Chicago Union Station, so there's no transfer between your home station and the city. The same line also runs to downtown Aurora.

It's a busy line. As of September 8, 2025, Metra's public timetable showed 97 weekday BNSF trains, 47 inbound and 50 outbound. Ten of those weekday trains begin their runs at Fairview Avenue, and one begins at Main Street.

On days you drive instead, Union Station is about 22 miles from Downers Grove, roughly 30 to 40 minutes by car depending on traffic. O'Hare is about 18 miles away, around 25 to 30 minutes by car, and downtown Oak Brook is about 6 miles off, typically a 15 to 20 minute drive.

Which neighborhoods sit around downtown and the Main Street station?

E.H. Prince's Subdivision and Denburn Woods both border the downtown area: the Village's architectural survey map places E.H. Prince's north and northwest of downtown and the Main Street station, and it places Denburn Woods, just west of downtown, with the station and the downtown commercial core to its northeast. The Downers Grove neighborhood guide covers the rest of the village.

E.H. Prince's Subdivision

E.H. Prince's Subdivision offers a wide range of house styles on a single set of streets. The housing documented there includes Queen Anne houses, Craftsman bungalows, Foursquares, ranches, and split-levels, and the Village points to the subdivision as the place with many of the town's Craftsman-style homes.

Denburn Woods

Denburn Woods is a single-family neighborhood of winding, wooded roads laid out on the part of General Arthur C. Ducat's former estate west of Main Street. Ducat named the estate Lindenwald, and a portion of Denburn Woods still carries that name. A 1947 Sanborn map showed approximately 30 homes on oversized lots along those roads, and the Charles D. Faulkner, Jr. House on Hawthorne Lane went up between 1951 and 1952.

The Denburn Woods Homeowners Association, founded in the early 1950s, holds title to a triangular property bounded by Brookbank and Turvey Roads that is kept in a natural state as wildlife cover.

The Maple Avenue area

Downtown's central business stretch of Main Street runs from Franklin Street to Maple Avenue, and the Maple Avenue area holds a cluster of older houses. A 2025 review of the area's inventory listed seven Queen Annes, three American Four Squares, three Bungalows, and two Mid-Century Modern homes as its top styles. One of the best known is an 1895 Queen Anne on Maple Avenue that William James Herring designed and built.

For outdoor time, Gilbert Park sits at the western end of Gilbert Avenue on a former quarry site next to Maple Grove Forest Preserve. The forest preserve has a second entrance on Gilbert Avenue between Belmont Road and Main Street.

Around downtown Downers Grove you'll find Queen Annes, bungalows, and Mid-Century Modern ranches, along with townhouses, apartments, and condos in the blocks zoned for denser housing. The Village's Architectural and Historical Survey of downtown and three residential districts found Queen Anne, Prairie School, Foursquare, Tudor Revival, Colonial Revival, Chicago Bungalow, and Mid-Century Modern ranch homes. According to the Village, the Bungalow was a dominant building form in Downers Grove, commonly built from 1890 to 1930.

Zoning explains the mix. The downtown zoning map includes R4 single-family blocks with 7,500-square-foot lots, R5 two-family, R5A townhouse, and R6 multiple-family districts, plus the Downtown Business and Downtown Transition districts. The Comprehensive Plan calls for residential development, generally denser than elsewhere in the village, to be the main use in the Downtown Edge, a transit-oriented mixed-use area. Some downtown buildings already have homes upstairs, and a May 2024 Village report documents second-floor residential units above a commercial property on Main Street.

Owners of older houses should know the review process. For designated landmarks and properties in historic districts, additions visible from the street require review by the Village and the Historic Preservation Design and Review Board.

Around the Fairview Avenue station

The Fairview and Maple Avenue district is built around its BNSF Metra station, close to downtown and Ogden Avenue, with small commercial uses and a new 18-unit apartment building at Fairview and Second. The Comprehensive Plan calls for mixed-use development there that serves commuters and nearby residents and complements Downtown Downers Grove. The Village adopted the Guiding DG Streetscapes Plan in April 2025, which identifies potential improvements in the Fairview Focus Area, and it describes the Fairview work as a long-term effort that may take several decades.

What do homes in Downers Grove cost?

Single-family homes in Downers Grove sold for a median of $622,252 from July to September 2026, according to Redfin, and Zillow puts the typical single-family home value at $543,593 in September 2026.

Attached homes come in at different price points. Over the same July to September 2026 period, townhouses sold for a median of $425,005 and condos for a median of $198,980, according to Redfin, while Zillow's typical condo value was $224,307 in September 2026.

Across all home types, Zillow's typical home value for Downers Grove was $502,828 in September 2026, and typical values run from $311,968 for lower-priced homes to $777,456 for higher-priced homes. These are village-wide figures, so when you're comparing homes in Downers Grove, IL for sale near the stations, recent sales on the specific street and for the specific house style tell you more.

How does commuter parking work at the Downers Grove stations?

Commuter parking at the Downers Grove stations runs on quarterly permits, which cost $120 per quarter for residents and $165 per quarter for nonresidents and commuters from unincorporated areas, at rates in effect since January 1, 2024. Each permit is valid only for its assigned lot.

The Main Street station's lots are A, B, C, D, and F, and permit holders must display the permit at all times. These lots are free after 11:00 a.m. on weekdays and all day on Saturdays, Sundays, and Village holidays. The Village estimated the Main Street permit wait at 4 years as of its October 28, 2025 update, and only incorporated Downers Grove residents may join that wait list. That makes the address worth checking before you commit to a house for sale in Downers Grove, IL with a train commute in mind.

Fairview Avenue had no permit wait list as of the same update, and permits there were available first-come, first-served. Lot I at Fairview requires a commuter permit and is free after 11:00 a.m. Daily $3 spaces are in the part of Lot I north of Second Street, on numbered spaces north of the tracks east of Fairview along Burlington Avenue, and on numbered spaces east of Florence Avenue.

Daily parking for occasional riders

You don't need a quarterly permit to ride now and then. A $3 daily permit is required in commuter lots A, B, C, D, F, G, H, and I before 11:00 a.m., and the Village sells one-day $3 permits at Village Hall after 8:30 a.m. that are valid for lots serving both the Main Street and Fairview Avenue stations. Levels 3, 4, and 5 of the downtown Parking Deck also charge $3 a day, paid at the on-site pay station. The pay-by-phone option adds a $0.50 service charge, and its zone numbers are 307 for Main Street and the Parking Deck, 308 for the Fairview lot, and 306 for the Belmont lots.

What's near the Main Street station for dining and errands?

Downtown Downers Grove, home to more than 300 businesses according to the Downtown Management Corporation, puts restaurants, a grocery, and a Saturday market on and around the same stretch of Main Street as the station.

Among the restaurants in downtown Downers Grove, Gatto's Italian Restaurant & Bar on Main Street offers open-air dining along the sidewalk when the weather allows, and Pierce Tavern, also on Main Street, serves burgers, bourbon, and beer. Cadence Kitchen & Co is on Mochel Drive. For quick groceries, Downtown Food Mart on Main Street is a grocery and liquor store.

On Saturdays from May 9 through October 17, 2026, the Downtown Downers Grove Market sets up at the Main Street Train Station from 7:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., with more than 60 vendors selling produce, prepared food, flowers, and crafts. Visitors get free four-hour parking on Level 1 of the Parking Deck on Curtiss Street and three-hour parking in Lot A and the Forest Avenue lots.