Humboldt Park apartment mid-rise listed for $15M

Broker-developer Bill Senne completed the 35-unit Vista on the Park complex at 2635 West North Avenue last year

Bill Senne and a rendering of Vista on the Park (Credit: LinkedIn)
Bill Senne and a rendering of Vista on the Park (Credit: LinkedIn)

Broker-developer Bill Senne is ready to cash out on a new mixed-use complex he completed in Humboldt Park last year.

Senne, president of Chicago-based brokerage Property Consultants, is asking $14.7 million for the 35-unit Vista on the Park building at 2635 West North Avenue, according to a marketing brochure from Marcus & Millichap.

The apartments sit atop about 700 square feet of retail space that’s leased to a cafe and a real estate office. The building opened last year.

At the time it opened last summer, Vista on the Park was one of few ground-up apartment developments to take shape in rapidly-gentrifying Humboldt Park, where home prices have skyrocketed since 2017. The building’s paneled design and rooftop amenities mimic the parade of new high-end apartment developments rising along the Milwaukee Avenue corridor to the east and north.

Each unit also includes a private balcony and in-unit laundry, according to Kyle Stengle, senior director of Marcus & Millichap’s multifamily and mixed-use group. The amenities, combined with more spacious apartments than are found in most comparable new apartment buildings, helped fill the building within months of its opening, he said.

The building includes one- and two-bedroom apartments measuring between 875 and 1,310 square feet, with rents ranging from $1,931 to $3,605 per month.

Senne paid $915,000 in 2015 to buy the property from investor Neil Freeman, according to Cook County property records. Two years later, while construction was underway on the six-story residential complex, Senne secured a $7.7 million loan on the property from Park Ridge Community Bank.

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In order to bring the development in line with the city’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance, Senne also built a small apartment building with a trio of three-bedroom units at 1411 North Fairfield Avenue, about a half-mile away. Those apartments rent at $1,270 per month and are being marketed for sale together with the North Avenue property, according to the brochure.

The site lies inside the city’s Milwaukee affordability pilot zone, where any new residential proposal needs to set aside 15 percent of its units as affordable in order to secure zoning approval. Since Senne began construction before the pilot zone went into effect in November 2017, his proposal did not trigger the requirements.

Stengle and Austin Weisenbeck of Marcus & Millichap also brokered the sale of Senne’s Maynard mixed-use building at 2934 North Milwaukee Avenue in 2015. CLK Properties ultimately bought that property for $6.1 million in 2015, property records show.

In both cases, the breadth of banks willing to offer financing at relatively low interest rates presented a “good opportunity to sell the asset,” Stengle said.

Vista on the Park is about two blocks east of the 207-acre Humboldt Park and two blocks south of the 606 Trail, where property values have spiked especially hard. Local Alderman Roberto Maldonado (26th) recently introduced a series of ordinances to downzone properties near the trail as a way of slowing the frenzy of new development, but the measures reportedly stalled in the City Council on Wednesday.

Senne did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.