Fulton Street Cos. strikes again in Chicago’s Fulton Market

Fulton Street Cos. is living up to its name.

The Chicago developer is buying four loft office buildings in the Fulton Market neighborhood for $34 million, its fifth project in the area, according to Crain’s. The seller is Woodbury, N.Y.-based CLK Properties.

Fulton Street earlier this month unveiled plans for a 1.5-million-square-foot mixed-use project along the 1200 block of West Fulton, with offices, lab space and a large gym. It’s also finishing work on a 150,000-square-foot building at 1045 W. Fulton St., preparing to break ground on a 34-story building at 1201 W. Fulton St. and recently sold a redeveloped property at 1100 W. Fulton St.

Fulton Street Founder and CEO Alex Najem has a personal connection to the four loft properties, totaling 77,000 square feet: he worked at Cedar Street, another Chicago developer, when it sold the buildings at Aberdeen and Fulton streets to the CLK venture in 2015. The property also includes a surface parking lot.

The buildings today have a mix of small tenants and blocks of vacant space, giving Fulton Street some in-place revenue as well as an opportunity to lease up or reposition the properties with new types of uses, according to Crain’s.

CLK’s local portfolio is mostly made up of residential properties. It purchased three of the office buildings from CLK in a $27 million portfolio deal with Cedar Street in April 2015 and the fourth for $7.7 million in December of that year, according to Crain’s, citing Cook County records and data from research firm Real Capital Analytics.

[Crain’s] – Harrison Connery