Cedar Street moves forward with 7-story multifamily project in University Village

The prolific apartment developer paid $3M to buy a vacant lot at the corner of 15th Street and Blue Island Avenue

Cedar Street managing partners Mark Heffron (Top), Will Murphy (Bottom), and Alex Samoylovich (Left)
Cedar Street managing partners Mark Heffron (Top), Will Murphy (Bottom), and Alex Samoylovich (Left)

Prolific apartment developer Cedar Street Companies bought a vacant lot in University Village where it plans to build a new seven-story complex.

Pilsen Gateway LLC, an entity that traces back to Cedar Street’s Uptown headquarters, bought the assemblage of vacant lots bounded by 15th Street, Racine Avenue and Blue Island Avenue for $3.2 million last week, according to Cook County property records.

Cedar Street co-founder and Managing Principal Alex Samoylovich secured a $3.4 million loan on the property from Associated Bank, the same lender that backed his firm’s $18.7 million acquisition of the Bridgeview Bank building in Uptown less than a week earlier, records show.

The seller, an entity controlled by Bruce Mueller, Max Tsai and Chris Karabelas, took a loss on the property. It paid $3.7 million to buy the land from TCF Bank in November 2007, according to county records.

Although most active in Uptown, Cedar Street owns and manages dozens of buildings throughout the city, and some in the suburbs. The Blue Island Avenue site gives it three properties in University Village.

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The firm applied in March for permits to build a “new seven-story residential building” on the site, city buildings department records show. It would mark the first ground-up development in the quickly-growing neighborhood for Cedar Street, which tends to specialize in adaptive reuse projects.

One of the company’s first-ever acquisitions was a three-story brick building at 1151 West Taylor Street with four apartments on top of ground-floor retail, according to its website. In 2015, Cedar Street bought the 130,000-square-foot Otis Loft Timber Warehouse at 1435 West 15th Street, DNAinfo reported at the time. After a $14 million renovation, the building is now home to 92 apartments.

The planned building on Blue Island will compete for residents against CityPads, which is building a 59-unit coliving facility at 1407 West 15th Street.

Farther east, Property Markets Group last year completed its own 99-unit “X Chicago” coliving facility at 710 West 14th Street.

Representatives of Cedar Street and the previous property owner did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.