CRG lists Uptown Multifamily Upshore Chapter for sale

UPDATED, June 13, 2023 3:30 p.m.

A national developer is looking to unload an Uptown multifamily asset five years after it was built.

CRG, a Chicago-based real estate developer, is selling the Upshore Chapter, a 149-unit apartment building at 4555 North Sheridan Road. The firm hired CBRE’s Chicago multifamily team to market the property.

The listing doesn’t include a price, but CRG’s website said its construction costs were $30.7 million, or a little more than $200,000 per unit. Nearby multifamily properties sold since the start of 2022 include the 64-unit Stewart School Lofts in Uptown that fetched $23 million total, or nearly $360,000 per unit, and the 155-unit Anderson Point property that traded for $54 million in February, or $348,000 per unit.

While it’s difficult to determine how the Upshore Chapter property could be valued in a sale, it may have a harder time notching the high per-unit values achieved by recent area multifamily sales, given that capital markets have squeezed borrowers for more interest over the last year as governments battled inflation. Plus, the Stewart School Lofts units are especially large for the area.

A media representative for CRG did not respond to a request for comment and CBRE’s listing agent declined to comment.

The effort to sell is being made at a precarious time for commercial real estate in the Windy City, where slowing deal volumes as a result of interest rate jumps, remote work and changing demographics have begun to transform the city’s real estate market.

But multifamily has proven to be a consistently safe bet investment in Chicago, where apartments are in demand, especially in areas near, or with easy access to, downtown. Upshore is two blocks from a CTA Red Line station. And even though rent growth is slowing in Chicago — rents in Class A buildings were $3.61 per square foot last quarter, up 1.7 percent from a year earlier, the smallest annual increase in two years and below average for the previous decade — price increases here were outpaced much of the rest the nation as of earlier this year.

CRG broke ground on the Uptown project in June 2018 with its sister companies, Lamar Johnson Collaborative and Clayco.

Completed in 2019, the property features a 2,000-square-foot rooftop deck with views of the Chicago skyline as well as a gym, business center and dog salon. The 12-story property is mostly one-bedroom apartments, and is currently 85 percent occupied and 93 percent leased.

The property also has 5,300 square feet of commercial retail space, and 56 percent of that space is currently leased or has a letter of intent. Gross rents grew 4.1 percent in 2022, according to the listing flier.

The listing comes amid other changes for CRG. The firm, which is the development arm of Chicago construction firm Clayco, hired Shawn Clark as CEO in March. The company’s former chief development officer, Chris McKee, has taken over as president.

The firm had also opened eight regional offices and completed more than $2 billion in transactions last year, according to the company. The sale also comes on the heels of Steve Schnur’s appointment as COO last month.

This story was updated to clarify that Upshore Chapter’s construction cost $30.7 million and to add context about other recent apartment building sales near the property.