Loop landlord claims McDonald’s griddled residential conversion

Loop landlord Steven DeGraff has some beef with the biggest fast food company in the world.

DeGraff, an attorney with Much Shelist law firm and a partner in the venture that owns the Delaware Building at 36 West Randolph Street, wants to convert the office building into a 64-unit residential property, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. But he claims McDonald’s, which had a restaurant on the first two floors until closing a few years ago, still leases the space and isn’t willing to work with the developers, even though it has no plans to reopen in the space.

Instead, Chicago-based McDonald’s is playing hardball and waiting for a buyout from the landlord, DeGraff said. The fast food company won’t give up 93 square feet of its leased property that DeGraff needs to create a second entrance, which is required under city fire codes.

McDonald’s owned the building decades ago and worked out a deal when it sold so that it now pays $1 a year in rent plus 39 percent of the building’s property tax bill as part of the lease, DeGraff told the outlet.

Converting the property into housing from offices would align with Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s “LaSalle Street Reimagined” initiative. She launched the program in September in response to the pandemic sapping demand for vintage Loop office buildings, leaving landlords along and near LaSalle in dire financial straits.

The city has said it will provide developers financial incentives such as tax increment financing and other perks to get projects over the finish line that dedicate at least 30 percent of new housing units created to affordable pricing for households making 60 percent of the area median income, or $62,520 for a family of four.

DeGraff said the 32,000-square-foot, eight-story Randolph Street building’s floors and windows are too small to appeal to office tenants in today’s market. He said the property is better suited for a $15 million conversion that would create 64 apartments.

Built shortly after the Chicago Fire of 1871, the building is one of few from that era still standing in Chicago today. It’s a Chicago landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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