Fulton Market meatpacking plant to become neighborhood’s next boutique office

The owner of a long-vacant Fulton Market meatpacking plant is preparing to open the neighborhood’s newest office project in the shadow of Google’s Midwest headquarters.

Aiman Humadieh applied for building permits to add a penthouse level and new facade to the four-story brick warehouse at 1107 West Fulton Street, according to principals of Englewood Construction, the general contractor on the project. The completed 19,000-square-foot complex would include about 4,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and a rooftop deck.

The building has sat empty since Humadieh paid $500,000 to buy it in 2004, and its facade has since begun to “buckle and collapse under its own weight,” Englewood operations director Chuck Taylor said.

The bone-deep rehab will also involve removing and resetting all the building’s floor plates farther apart from one another, a recurrent challenge in transforming the neighborhood’s 20th-century industrial warehouses into modern office and dining destinations.

“It didn’t need very high ceilings as a meatpacking building, but it’s going to need all that space for future use,” Taylor said. “Not just so you can run all the mechanicals, but because that’s what users are looking for right now.”

The new facade will mimic its original brick-and-limestone design, he said.

When it comes time to court office tenants for the building, the landlord will have to compete with more than a million square feet of new workspace now planned within a stone’s throw of the Google office and adjacent CTA station. The wave of ambitious ground-up projects from developers like Sterling Bay, Shapack Partners and Thor Equities has been enough to pull the city’s overall office demand west of Downtown.

But gut rehabs of low-rise warehouses have played an equally big part in the West Loop’s ascendence, especially in its flourishing dining scene. Developers like Convexity have bought up meatpacking plants and turned them into homes for renowned restaurants like Duck Duck Goat, Kuma’s Corner and The Publican.

Humadieh’s building, which might include a restaurant in its retail space, will be next door to a nearly 13,000-square-foot food hall soon to be opened by McCaffery Interests at 1115 West Fulton.

It also would be next to a building where businessman and strip club owner Perry Mandera in 2014 proposed opening a medical marijuana dispensary until Alderman Walter Burnett (27th) rejected the proposal, according to DNAinfo.

Englewood is aiming to have the building ready for tenants by early next year.