Glenview Office Campus Set for Housing Conversion Sells for $14M

The developers planning a 60-home neighborhood in Glenview took over the site in December after village leaders gave it final approval.

Highland Park-based Generation 4, led by Keith Jacobs, formerly of the Jacobs Companies, and Red Seal Homes — a Nashville-based firm with an office in Northbrook — purchased the 19.4-acre former Scott Foresman site at 1900 East Lake Avenue in Glenview for $14 million in December, according to property records. Chicago-based investment firm R2 was the seller.

In a joint venture with Wheaton-based T2 Capital Management, R2 acquired the $16.7 million loan note on the property through foreclosure proceedings in 2022, property records show. The now-vacant building on the lot was previously operated by Scott Foresman, a publisher of school textbooks. It’s unknown how much R2 paid to acquire the property’s debt, but it was likely below its face value due to the borrower’s default.

Sales for the 60 lots on the site are already in progress, with prices ranging from $399,900 to $725,000. KC Kaage, a Compass agent whose team Kaage Homes is leading sales of the lots, said 24 of the 60 lots are currently under contract.

For most of the lots, buyers will be able to work with designers and builders to build custom homes, Kaage said. The developers will build a few spec houses on the land, with Kaage Homes leading design, he said.

“This is an opportunity for people to customize their home to their tastes, to their liking,” he said. “They control the budget, and it provides a unique opportunity that hasn’t been seen in several decades here in Glenview.”

Red Seal Homes did not respond to requests for comment, and Jacobs declined to comment.

Matt Garrison, CEO of R2, said the firm expected to flip the site into a residential development since it took it over. R2 put the site on the market in 2023 after a previous developer’s proposal to turn the site into rental housing got rejected. Garrison said there was interest from buyers for other uses, but residential was the best fit.

“In this case, with a 20 acre land site near downtown Glenview, it was clear from day one that this was likely a residential development site,” he said.

The development, which was pitched as primarily marketed to empty-nesters, gained final village approval in December. Throughout the permitting process, the Glenview Village Board of Trustees wanted to ensure the lots were purchased by empty-nesters and limit the number of new school-aged children the development would add to the local district.

The village is requiring 75 percent of the homes built on the site to be ranch-style or have the primary bedroom on the first floor, according to city documents, in an attempt to appeal to the cohort.

Kaage said he could not share the demographics of the people under contract for the lots. The village’s preferences for the first-floor bedrooms has “proven to be very attractive to the market, given the lack of inventory right now,” he said.

The developers plan to begin interior demolition on the vacant building in the next two weeks, Kaage said, and exterior demolition will begin in February. The building contains a time capsule installed by the education company, which the developers plan to hand over to the village, Kaage said.

After demolition, the developers will begin preparing the lots by building utilities, roads and other infrastructure, Kaage said. He is expecting lots to be handed over to buyers by late spring.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct details of R2’s acquisition of the property with T2 in 2022.