Mansion coming to Lincoln Park lot instead of condos

A Hudson Avenue lot where five condos were planned will be the home of one big house instead.

After spending $3 million for two parcels in the 1800 block of Hudson Avenue in October, Barrett Homes demolished the two late-1880s brick and limestone three-flats with plans to build five condos on the lots, Crain’s reported. In early April, Barrett sold the Lincoln Park site to an unnamed buyer for $4 million. The buyer plans to build a single home on the lot instead of a complex of condo units.

The lot is 5,904 square feet, which is about 95 percent of a standard double Chicago lot, and could accommodate a house larger than 11,000 square feet under current zoning standards.

Barrett Homes planned to redevelop this lot in the same way it had done previously on Howe Street in 2018. Two buildings that look like typical extra-wide Lincoln Park mansions actually contain six condos each.

“They were not planning to sell until this guy approached them,” Jeff Lowe, the Compass agent who represented Barrett, said.

Barrett hadn’t begun filing plans and permits for the Hudson Street lot, but the condos likely would have been priced around $1.5 million to $2 million.

The buyers were looking for buildable lots in Lincoln Park, which are becoming more and more difficult to find, as multiple-lot houses have been replacing older buildings in the neighborhood for a large part of the last 20 years — specifically in the blocks south of Armitage Avenue and north of Willow and Menomonee streets.

High-end construction runs about $700-$1,000 per square foot, meaning an 11,000-square-foot home could cost anywhere from $7.7 million to $11 million on top of the $4 million the buyer paid for the site in the first place.

Even though Barrett sold the lot for $1 million more than it paid in 2018, Lowe said the firm isn’t profiting off of the sale due to demolition costs and brokers’ fees.

[CCB] — Victoria Pruitt