CRM Properties includes 40-story resi tower in Lincoln Park mixed-use project

The plan comes 3 years after developer proposed a 29-story building at the site

A wall section of the project and a view of 1520 North Fremont Street (Credit: Chicago City Clerk and Google Maps)
A wall section of the project and a view of 1520 North Fremont Street (Credit: Chicago City Clerk and Google Maps)

CRM Properties Group is resurrecting plans for a mixed-use development near Fremont and Weed streets in Lincoln Park, this time with a 40-story residential tower as its centerpiece.

The Deerfield-based developer floated a plan in 2015 for a project featuring a 29-story apartment building and a total of 407 new units, but it never materialized, according to Curbed.

Now the firm is back with plans for the taller tower, a seven-story retail and residential building, and a three-story commercial building in the area of North Avenue and Fremont, Weed and Kingsbury streets. In all, 500 residential units would be built, according to a zoning application filed with the city.

The 40-story building would rise on the site of a parking lot at 1520-1576 North Fremont Street, while the seven-story building rise over what is now a parking lot across from Whole Foods at 1531-1539 North Kingsbury. The one-story auto repair shop at 909 West North Avenue would be replaced with a three-story commercial building.

The tallest of the three buildings would be more than 50 percent taller than any existing building in the area, according to Curbed.

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Cook County records show CRM took out a $24 million loan on the property in June 2015 from Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company.

CRM’s project would join a slew of development in the neighborhood’s Clybourn Corridor in recent years.

Structured Development delivered the New City complex in 2015 at 1457 North Halsted Street, boosting efforts to transform the Corridor after the demolition of the last of the towers in the Cabrini-Green public housing complex in 2011. New City is now owned by Bucksbaum Retail Management, which recently signed Strive Logistics to a 20,000-square-foot lease.

Structured, meanwhile, has moved on to its Shops at Big Deahl complex nearby at Blackhawk and Kingsbury streets. The developer also plans to build a 197-unit apartment complex on the current site of the nonprofit Menomonee Club community center at 1535 North Dayton Street, and in exchange will build a new $13.5 million, 50,000-square-foot center for the club at Shops at Big Deahl. [Curbed] — John O’Brien