Roszak Pitches Apartments for Sterling Bay Fulton Market Site

Residential demand is spilling west from downtown Chicago and prompting the next high-rise pivot in Fulton Market, this time from a developer picking up where Sterling Bay left off.

Thomas Roszak’s TR Management + Consulting plans to build a 29-story, 398-unit apartment building at 1200 West Carroll Avenue on a site that Sterling Bay previously entitled for a 14-story office building, Crain’s reported.

Developers in Fulton Market are increasingly scrapping office plans in favor of residential, as commercial demand cools and apartment rent growth climbs.

Roszak is under contract to buy the site from Sterling Bay and aims to close by year-end. Construction could start early next year and finish 18 months later, he said.

The proposed tower would feature a glass-and-metal façade, 17,700 square feet of retail space and a landscaped public plaza at Carroll and Racine. Roughly 20 percent of the units, about 80, would be set aside as affordable, in compliance with Chicago’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance.

Sterling Bay, which paid $22 million for the Carroll site in 2018, marketed it alongside other western Fulton Market parcels amid financial setbacks, including a partial loss of its Lincoln Yards site to lender Bank OZK earlier this year. JDL is in talks to buy half of Lincoln Yards.

Roszak’s firm Moceri & Roszak recently sold the 306-unit Fulbrix Apartments at 160 North Elizabeth for $170 million. The firm expects more multifamily projects to get approved and financed in the area over the next few years, he said.

The broader shift from office to residential has become a trend across Fulton Market. Domus Group, Onni Group and Fulton Street Companies have all reworked pipeline projects toward apartments, citing rising rents, high borrowing costs and limited supply.

About 1,400 apartment units were recently delivered or under construction in the neighborhood as of the fourth quarter, according to Integra Realty Resources. But the pace is slowing. Only one building is slated for completion in Fulton Market next year, with fewer than 300 new units expected across all of downtown this year.

— Judah Duke