Lincoln Park Opulence Shows in $4 Million Home Addition

A veteran trading executive is doubling down on one of Lincoln Park’s most-exclusive residential blocks with a $4 million addition.

Chris Gust, principal at Wolverine Trading and CEO and CIO of Wolverine Asset Management, and his wife, Susan, are adding to their Burling Street mansion, according to city records reported by Crain’s.

The project will attach a two-story structure with a basement, covered porch and roof deck to the couple’s four-story home. The expansion will include an outdoor pool on a lot adjacent to the house at 1871 North Burling Street. Von Weise Associates is listed as the architect, and Savane Design + Build will handle construction.

The Gusts’ property is part of the Burling-Orchard-Howe enclave of mansions that has defined the upper-tier of Lincoln Park for nearly two decades. In 1998, the couple paid $1.19 million for the parcel, later building the 6,200-square-foot mansion. In 2016, they acquired the lot to the north after buying out all six condos in a small building for $2.95 million.

Now they’re expanding to the south lot where the addition will rise. The three parcels total roughly three-tenths of an acre.

How much they’ve invested in the estate is hard to pin down, but available records suggest the owners have spent at least $8.1 million between land purchases and the construction permit, likely much more when factoring in earlier building costs and any undisclosed lot acquisitions.

The Cook County Assessor last valued the core mansion and its original lot at $5.34 million.

The project reinforces Burling Street’s reputation as one of Chicago’s concentrated luxury corridors, where recent sales have topped $10 million including the Richard and Michaela Parrillo estate that fetched $15.2 million last year.

— Eric Weilbacher