Standard Cos. buys Lakeview apartment complex for $53M

Standard Companies bought a 90-unit Lakeview apartment building for $53 million, as the firm seeks to get a piece of the Chicago multifamily boom.

The Los Angeles-based firm’s purchase of the Target Express-anchored building at 3200 North Clark Street gives it some 1,800 rental units in Illinois, though all the others are outside the city, according to Crain’s.

The firm bought the building, called Lakeview 3200, from a group led by local investor Greg Moyer. It was constructed less than two years ago. Moyer, of Skokie-based Ravine Park Partners, took over management of the project last year from its developer, Chicago-based BlitzLake Partners. The Chicago office of CBRE brokered the sale of the Lakeview 3200 property.

The building cost in the low $40 million range to construct, he told Crain’s.

The Target store generates about a third of the property’s rental revenue under a 15-year lease. And Standard principal Robert Koerner said because apartment rents in the building are below market rates, the company could boost revenue by hiking rents, along with reconfiguring its fitness center, improving common areas and adding apartments in a vacant space on the third floor.

Effective rents in the overall metro area rose 4 percent to $1,420, according to a second quarter report from Marcus & Millichap. While city rents held steady over the past 12 months at an average of $1,791, suburban rents jumped 6.1 percent to an average of $1,227.

Despite rising inventory, multifamily investors continue to look to buy and sell across the city.

One particularly active market is just north of Lakeview in Uptown, where a number of developers are delivering hundreds of new units, many of them luxury micro-apartments, in the near term. [Crain’s] — John O’Brien