McBrearty Builders will bring Bronzeville condos

McBrearty Builders will develop a condo complex on a long-vacant site in Bronzeville, adding to a growing number of residential projects in the South Side neighborhood.

Owner Eddie McBrearty said the three-building Flats on the Drive project is building on the growing demand in Bronzeville, according to Crain’s. The complex, to rise at Pershing Road and King Drive, also comes amid the rebirth in the immediate area since a Mariano’s supermarket opened across the intersection in 2016, according to the report.

The project will feature three, six-unit buildings on a lot that neighbors told Crain’s has been empty for at least 40 years. One building is nearly finished, with two contracts already signed.

Jennifer Bell of the Gramercy Group is marketing the condos, which will list starting at $379,000 for three-bedrooms and $509,000 for four-bedrooms.

Builders recently have been launching more projects in Bronzeville. The city granted 73 permits for new construction totaling almost $30 million of work in the neighborhood between July 2017 and July 2018, compared to 27 permits for $19 million worth of projects — including a $11 million park fieldhouse reconstruction — during the same period from 2014-15.

Last year, the first round of single-family houses was completed through the city’s Parade of Homes program, which gives developers discounts on city-owned land to build market-rate homes. And they turned brokers’ heads when they sold for upward of $600,000 each in the 4500 block of South Prairie Avenue.

McBrearty’s condos are not far from where McLaurin Development is in talks with the city to build hundreds of homes on a 20-acre property near Pershing Road and State Streets. [Crain’s] — John O’Brien