Tishman Speyer Placing 357-Unit Union West on Market

After a mere three years as owners, Tishman Speyer are looking to sell their 357-unit Union West apartment building.

In 2023, Tishman delved into the Chicago multifamily market by paying a $128 million bill for the 15-story property in Fulton Market, at 939 West Washington Boulevard. Now, CBRE brokers John Jaeger, Justin Puppi, Jason Zyck, Nicholas Miller and Jillian Jaeger have been tapped to offload the property, according to CoStar.

The high-rise is currently 96 percent leased, with an average rent of $3,133 per unit, and the 12,436-square-foot retail portion of the building is fully leased. Tishman still holds plenty of inventory in Chicago: Last month they brought in Databricks and Alliant as tenants to The Franklin at 227 West Monroe Street.

The deal comes in the middle of a flurry of activity across Chicago multifamily complexes. Earlier this week, R.I.G. Capital purchased a 1,115-unit apartment complex just a stone’s throw from O’Hare International Airport. Earlier this month, Titan Power Overseas Investment purchased a 23-story office building at 205 West Wacker Drive with explicit plans to convert the property into boutique apartments. According to the outlet, $6 billion has been spent on acquiring Chicago’s apartment complex inventory over the past year, a historically strong figure. The growth in multifamily complexes isn’t contained to downtown Chicago either, as suburban areas are seeing activity as well.

For many of Downtown Chicago’s increasingly vacant office spaces, the way forward chosen by owners is to convert them into apartments. The demand for apartment space is strong, according to the outlet, and there are more former office spaces looking to convert into multifamily complexes coming on the market seemingly weekly. Growth in Fulton Market, a former meatpacking district, was unfettered by the pandemic and is only seeming to accelerate in growth of high-end retail, apartment and office buildings.

— Hunter Cooke