Bender Buys North Side Apartments out of CA Ventures Distress

Kurt Bender waded into a pool of multifamily distress with the latest extension of his firm’s Chicagoland dealmaking streak.

Bender Companies bought a former Sears department store reborn as apartments on Chicago’s North Side for $29 million, closing the book on a foreclosure fight against the property’s previous owner, an offshoot of the embattled Chicago-based development firm CA Ventures.

Chicago-based Bender bought the four-story property at 1900 West Lawrence Avenue in the Ravenswood neighborhood alongside Denver-based Walker & Dunlop Investment Partners, CoStar reported. The deal was recorded Dec. 16, according to property records.

The sale resolves a foreclosure suit tied to the property’s redevelopment, which converted the long-vacant Sears box into 59 apartments and roughly 19,000 square feet of ground-floor retail about four years ago. The building sits at the corner of Lawrence and Wolcott avenues, steps from the Ravenswood Metra stop.

The transaction is described in Cook County records as a sale in lieu of foreclosure. The property had been owned by an entity tied to CA Residential, an affiliate of CA Ventures which partnered with another local firm on the adaptive reuse. Cushman & Wakefield brokers Jack Maloney and Brad Smith represented the seller.

The deal comes a little more than a year after LoanCore Capital filed a $32 million foreclosure complaint against CA Residential, alleging the developer failed to pay off its loan on the property.

While the apartment portion of the building is modest in scale, the retail is fully leased. One tenant is DeVry University’s Advantage Academy, a program that allows Chicago Public Schools high school students to earn college credits in technology-focused courses, giving the property a community-facing component.

Bender said it plans to invest in both exterior and interior upgrades, including a new fitness space. In a statement, Mark Barnes, the firm’s vice president of investments, pointed to a shortage of larger apartment offerings in Ravenswood as a key driver behind the acquisition.

The purchase adds to what’s shaping up as Chicago’s busiest year for multifamily investment sales since 2022. Investors closed on $4.9 billion worth of apartment deals in the metro area in 2025, according to CoStar data, eclipsing the $3.9 billion recorded in all of 2024.

The Ravenswood deal marks Bender Companies fifth acquisition of 2025. Other recent acquisitions include a $75.3 million purchase of a 509-unit complex in Mount Prospect and a $75.8 million deal for a 550-unit property in Hoffman Estates, both joint ventures with Eastham Capital.

— Eric Weilbacher