As Mayor Brandon Johnson strives to reset his standing with voters and Chicago’s real estate community, some more of the city’s big landlords are working to reset theirs with lenders.
Johnson is a little over halfway through his first term, but his real estate report card is a mixed bag. Go inside his grades on real estate-related policies according to industry players and a deputy mayor, from an A for eliminating parking minimums to an F for his failed transfer tax hike.
Lenders keep piling up lawsuits in the office market. New York-based Feil Organization is staring down foreclosure on a 35,000-square-foot West Loop loft office on Madison Street, after occupancy fell below 50 percent. It’s just the latest Chicago headache for Feil, which already surrendered a River North property and is battling litigation over its LaSalle Street tower.
In the multifamily market, student housing syndicator Versity Investments has fallen behind on $83 million in loans tied to The Buckingham and Tailor Lofts, two student towers near Roosevelt and UIC, respectively.
But bigger deals are getting back to flowing. Stuart Handler’s firm TLC dropped $100 million on a Vernon Hills apartment complex to mark the highest price in the suburbs so far this year. In Chicago, developer Noah Properties scored a $34 million exit for The Avondale, a 52-unit rental townhome complex on Belmont Avenue. The buyer is eyeing a rare rental-to-condo conversion, flipping the script on a decade of deconversions.
Development site prices remain down. In the Gold Coast, investor Don Wilson’s real estate firm Convexity scooped up a property entitled for 304 apartments at 1120 North State Street for $39 million, more than a third below its 2019 sale price. The parcel was once slated for a 42-story tower, but may see a fresh plan under Convexity.
The megaproject once set to transform the Chicago River’s North Branch is splintering some more. Sterling Bay has put the only finished Lincoln Yards building on the market — a vacant 284,000-square-foot lab-and-office property at 1229 West Concord. Once envisioned as the anchor to a $6 billion neighborhood, it now overlooks empty land that new developers, JDL and Kayne Anderson, move ahead have rebranded portions of with new plans for over 3,000 apartments.