Tucker, Wingspan Cash In on Skokie Multifamily With Refi

Richard Tucker and Nick Papanicholas Jr. are reaping the rewards of building Chicago-area apartments when nearly everyone else was sidelined.

A joint venture of their suburban Chicago multifamily firms, Skokie-based Tucker Development and Mount Prospect-based Wingspan Development Group, reeled in a $133 million refinancing for The Henry at Harms Woods, a 294-unit mixed-use apartment complex in Skokie at 5400 Old Orchard Road. Sourced from an unnamed institutional bank and arranged by commercial debt and equity broker BWE, the new first mortgage replaces the developers’ original $100 million construction debt.

The $33 million spread between the old debt and the new loan points to a sizable cash-out for the developers, giving them a tidy return while lowering their cost of capital as they finish leasing up the newly built property. They paid $13.3 million for the property ahead of its development in 2023, public records show.

The joint venture bought it from a venture of American Cement Association, formerly known Portland Cement Association, that had occupied a 130,000-square-foot office building previously on the site, before it was demolished by Tucker and Wingspan to make way for the multifamily project.

The developers’ loan marks a payout underscoring the strength of the suburban Chicago multifamily market — and the premium placed on newly delivered supply in a region recently starved of it. Wingspan unloaded several Chicago-area apartment developments for gains the last two years, including with a $78 million sale of a Plainfield property to Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin-based Continental and a $60 million Mount Prospect sale to veteran Chicago investor Stuart Handler’s firm TLC.

Back in October 2023, when interest rates were rising and commercial lending had slowed, Tucker and Wingspan managed a rare feat by pulling in their Skokie construction capital stack from Kennedy Wilson, which provided $77.3 million in a senior mortgage, and an insurance company that acted as a mezzanine lender. The developers plowed ahead, demolishing a dated 130,000-square-foot office building at 5400 Old Orchard Road and completing the 10.5-acre residential project in late 2025.

Now, with the region’s new development pipeline bottlenecked by lending conditions that remain tight and an even harder time for raising equity, The Henry is capturing the pent-up demand.

“Chicago’s multifamily market remains one of the most supply-constrained in the country,” BWE’s Daniel Rosenberg, who arranged the financing alongside Logan Petersmeyer, said in a statement. He noted the offering generated “strong interest across a broad range of capital sources.” Requests for the name of the bank lender on the new loan weren’t immediately returned by BWE and representatives of the developers.

The complex features 245 luxury apartments, 49 rental townhomes and roughly 8,000 square feet of retail. The site sits less than a mile west of the Westfield Old Orchard mall, where Paris-based retail player URW has tapped developer Tim Anderson’s Chicago-based firm Focus to redevelop a shuttered Bloomingdale’s store with its own 400-unit residential complex.