Fulton Street Cos. Lists West Loop Site For $8M

One of the most active investors and developers in Chicago’s Fulton Market district has listed a West Loop property for the second time this week.

Fulton Street Cos., led by CEO Alex Najem, has hired SVN Chicago to market the 15,950-square-foot property at 1325 West Randolph Street, CoStar reported. The asking price is $8 million — more than double the $3.92 million a Fulton Street affiliate paid for the site in 2018.

The property currently comprises a vacant 7,250-square-foot building and a parking lot. A buyer could raze the building and seek zoning approval to construct a high-rise, but Fulton Street is also open to leasing the property, where it once planned to build a 430-unit apartment tower.

Earlier this week, the firm hired CBRE to sell the roughly one-acre site at 1201 West Fulton Street, where it also had planned to build a 433-unit apartment high-rise. Fulton Street has rapidly expanded its West Loop portfolio since Najem founded the company in 2017, but it more recently started to offload its holdings in the area.

“There are a lot of big projects that we want to build, so this was not really a focus,” Najem told the outlet. “We’ve had multiple people talk to us about buying it. We figured if we took it to market, everyone would know it’s for sale.”

The Fulton Street listings come at a time when high interest rates and a tight lending climate are hindering development activity in Chicago and most major markets across the country. But the West Loop area is likely to withstand these challenges due to the scarcity of development sites and its overall popularity, Najem told the outlet.

—Quinn Donoghue