On a Monday afternoon in February 2019, Chicago developer James Letchinger was staring expressionless at his wall, trying to process the most crucial moment of his career.
Letchinger, whose JDL Development is arguably the biggest developer in the city, had just gotten word from his investment partner, prolific real estate fundraiser Larry Krueger, about the land in River North they were trying to buy from the Catholic church.
They had just closed on a deal to fund its massive development. The title company called to confirm.
“I was literally in shock,” Letchinger said. “I was desperate. I had a lot of money at risk.”
He’d learned from Krueger that they were set to buy the property for upwards of $100 million. From his desk at the office, then in Goose Island, he could see their plans for the property at 14 West Superior Street: a two-tower, mixed-use building, 77 floors at the tallest point. It would be called One Chicago.
Six years later, on the last day of September 2025, Letchinger was staring at a wall in his new office in that very building, now the eighth-tallest skyscraper in the city. He was having another solitary, somewhat stoic celebration. Within his sightline this time were the plans for Foundry Park, a $1 billion-plus development on 28 acres of the former Lincoln Yards site, which he had just closed on with Los Angeles-based Kayne Anderson for $84 million.
The project, as famous for being huge as for being stalled, has been a political and financial disaster. Previous developer Sterling Bay was going to turn it into a $6 billion behemoth spanning the Chicago River along 53 acres of waterfront land beside wealthy Lincoln Park and gentrified Bucktown.
But its lender, Bank OZK, ran out of patience with delinquent debt owed by Sterling and its previous investment partner Lone Star Funds, and seized the property. Letchinger bought his parcel on the north side of the river from Bank OZK in a deal that took a lot of energy, knowledge and relationships, but getting the project done won’t be just another feather in his cap.
Foundry Park’s momentum also underscores the revival of Chicago’s megadevelopment market on several sprawling sites that have sat fallow for years. In September, The 78 — an $8 billion development — got an important approval, and a separate South Side project secured land for its multibillion-dollar quantum computing facility.
“It’s easy when you have the money. Things can go fast.”
Corporate commitments to Chicago had become harder to land after former mayor Rahm Emannuel, perceived as business friendly, was replaced by a reformist candidate in Lori Lightfoot. The city’s reputation suffered under barrages of attacks from the first Trump administration and amid viral images of destructive racial justice protests in 2020, when Lightfoot ordered river bridges raised to keep disorder out of the Loop. Lightfoot’s succession by an even more unabashedly progressive mayor, Brandon Johnson, exacerbated concerns of investors.
Add in the national drop in commercial property values, and the overriding force for development in the city was inertia. Sure, Letchinger and Krueger got One Chicago done, but it wasn’t a magic button for the even bigger swings.
Now, with a few megaprojects set to move forward, every Chicago real estate owner has a stake in the outcome. Shepherding them to completion isn’t just good for morale, it’s crucial for the city to dodge more dreaded property tax hikes — Johnson is already wrestling with how to plug a $1.2 billion budget hole for 2026. And officials throughout all reaches of government — the statehouse, Cook County offices and ward and precinct-level leaders — are scrambling for legislative solutions that could spare homeowners from facing foreclosures over unpaid bills as their property taxes skyrocket.
But maybe all they needed was Letchinger and Foundry Park.
“Jim is a problem solver. He takes projects others find difficult or uneconomic and he finds a way to make them work,” said Krueger, who runs the commercial property investment firm Wanxiang America Real Estate Group on behalf of a Chinese family with an auto parts fortune.
Small firm, big backers
When it kicked off in 2016, Lincoln Yards was supposed to be Chicago’s biggest project in decades. Proposals started grand, with soccer stadiums and skyscrapers, but ultimately shrunk for zoning approval.
The Foundry Park Letchinger’s building could create nearly 3,300 homes, mostly rentals with some for-sale options, as well as 350,000 square feet of office space, 435,000 square feet of retail, 250,000 square feet of hospitality and 12 acres of open space, according to city records. It’s far less commercial workspace than Sterling Bay had planned, but it will be the biggest project of Letchinger’s career.
Letchinger, son of a salesman, was born and raised in Chicago. He went to the Latin School of Chicago and graduated from the University of Michigan. He learned “absolutely nothing” in college, he said.
He got into business, with a lighting showroom in River North that targeted architects and designers as clientele, which served as his introduction to real estate. Development fit his maverick nature. His first project, in 1993, was a building on Walton Street that he purchased from the co-op of an adjacent luxury building whose residents included Chicago business heavyweights, including the late Jay Pritzker. The co-op board insisted he had to buy without a financing contingency.
“I knew nothing. I walked out of the meeting and called my banker and asked, ‘What’s a financing contingency?’” Letchinger said.
He did the deal and converted the property into condos.
For the next decade, he worked on midscale, for-sale residential properties. The Great Financial Crisis almost ruined him, but he got through and became a big-time rental and condo highrise developer backed by institutional capital. His firm consists of just a handful of people, including his son, Joey, who skipped college (with dad’s blessing) to become a sommelier and wine broker in New York before returning to Chicago and JDL.
“Growing up, it wasn’t like he went to work, he came home and there was separation,” Joey said. “His work has always been a very important part of our family. Every single night of the week, having dinner and talking, it was mostly about what JDL is doing.”
Though Letchinger happily remains the face of his projects, he has partnered with a Who’s Who of high finance and CRE titans to raise money when he needs it. That list includes Square Mile Capital, now Affinius, Prudential and Wanxiang.
In 2011, he teamed with Hines to break ground in Old Town on Chicago’s first major multifamily project post-2008 recession. They sold the resulting property for $163 million, a record price per unit at the time.
From there, Letchinger took on several large projects, ranging from the South Loop to Wrigleyville. He has a role in the office development underway at 919 West Fulton Street, as well as a slice of The Parker Fulton Market apartment building. He built the luxury condos No. 9 Walton at 9 West Walton Street, where Governor J.B. Pritzker just bought a multi-floor spread from fellow billionaire Ken Griffin.
“It almost killed me,” Letchinger said. JDL had been involved in building out each fully customized unit for a discerning crowd.
With the deal for The Parker earlier this year, Letchinger became a buyer rather than builder. JDL partnered with the family office of John Schreiber, the Lake Forest resident who co-founded Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, to purchase that property for $93 million. They teamed up again when Schreiber bought the Cobbler Square Lofts in Old Town for about $90 million.
JDL is also making progress on the $1.3 billion North Union, its transformation of the former Moody Bible Institute into more than 2,600 dwellings.
“When I closed on Foundry, my wife looked at me and said, ‘So you’re not retiring?’ No. I’ve got a good 20 years left,” Letchinger, 62, said. “But I’ll never retire.”
Relationship business
During his 15-year building spree, Letchinger didn’t just mind his own projects. In 2019, about the time Letchinger was closing on the property that would become One Chicago, he hosted a meeting about Lincoln Yards at his old office.
He sat at the table with a group that included Chicago Alderman Brian Hopkins and Sterling Bay’s CEO Andy Gloor.
Letchinger was there to boost the $6 billion Lincoln Yards campus — his competitor’s project.
“It was compelling, exciting. As a developer you’re envious of someone who can do something so massive in my city,” Letchinger said.
Letchinger is the kind of businessperson who says yes when he means yes and no when he means no. If he doesn’t want to get drinks with you, he won’t. He golfs with friends, not to network. Though Letchinger can be a lone wolf, he knows the pack — the institutional players he needs to partner with to get his projects built.
This straightforward attitude helps explain the unusual 2019 meeting. At that time, Letchinger was still working to line up the $100 million land purchase for what would become One Chicago. Sterling Bay was going to be a primary fundraiser.
Both One Chicago and Lincoln Yards were under the governance of Hopkins, the alderman, and Letchinger thought he could help move along Sterling Bay’s vision for its riverfront land as he pushed forward on One Chicago.
Advice often goes ignored, and Letchinger claims he told Sterling Bay to not get into expensive infrastructure commitments that would nail down city subsidies for Lincoln Yards. Sterling did anyway, and the deals proved fatal for its plans.
In the process of going to bat for Lincoln Yards, Letchinger also solidified his relationship with Krueger, who had been working extensively with Sterling Bay on successful Chicago developments, notably Google’s Fulton Market headquarters, in the previous few years.
Wanxiang America is an auto parts manufacturer that has brought hundreds of millions in capital to high-profile Chicago real estate projects over the last decade and a half.
When Gloor decided to focus on Lincoln Yards instead of investing in One Chicago, Krueger stepped up for Letchinger. Wanxiang itself would fund JDL’s land purchase, Krueger said, in the call that left Letchinger staring stunned at his wall.
“He’s the ultimate partner,” Letchinger said. “Larry Krueger has a special place in my business life.”
Letchinger paid dearly to maintain the relationship.
“I’ve got other partners that are not as willing as Jim has been to really kind of do whatever it takes to help his partner get through a difficult time,” Krueger said.
One Chicago ended up being completed at the worst possible time for a developer needing to refinance a massive construction loan. The commercial property market had nosedived, and Letchinger had to subordinate his interest in more than $260 million of developer equity to Wanxiang in order to pull off a $415 million refinancing last year. He did so with little hesitation. The refinancing took construction lenders, including Affinius, out of the building’s financial stack.
“It was a lot of money, and it was a big bet, but it was a leap of faith,” Letchinger said. “This was a risky construction project.”
Perhaps as a result, Wanxiang is still taking swings with JDL. Last year they scored a $160 million construction loan for a 95-unit condo project in Juno Beach, Florida, which is close to wrapping up.
Letchinger’s relationships aren’t just with the industry. In March, he donated $1,000 to a political organization for Alderman Scott Waguespack, whose district now includes the Foundry Park site.
Of his political donations, Letchinger said, “I am an equal opportunity check writer, give to everybody,” while noting he had supported Waguespack with another $1,000 back in 2022, “long before I moved on Lincoln Yards.” Illinois records show he has personally contributed over $90,000 to political candidates since 2005, with the biggest amounts going to Hopkins and fellow North Side Alderman Brendan Reilly. Reilly’s campaigns recently collected over $12,000 from Letchinger and another $25,000 from a One Chicago ownership entity while gearing up for a run at longtime Cook County board president incumbent Toni Preckwinkle.
Pressing go
Chicago’s megadevelopments don’t have to be stuck in the mud. What rebirthed Lincoln Yards as Foundry Park was a simple decision by Lone Star to move on from Sterling Bay’s vision, and find an exit, even at a painful loss. When there’s a drought of development capital, a moment of repricing can bring opportunity.
“It’s easy when you have the money,” Letchinger said. “Things can go fast.”
On Oct. 24, he purchased an additional 2 acres of vacant land next to Foundry Park from General Iron, which is still looking for a buyer for another 18 adjacent acres — as it has been since 2022.
After so many years of Sterling Bay planning and negotiating Lincoln Yards, the larger change of ownership happened swiftly — Letchinger first met with Kayne Anderson in South Florida to propose partnering on the purchase in May of 2025.
As summer 2025 gave way to fall, Letchinger found he wasn’t alone. Chicago’s megaproject engine really started revving again.
With publicly traded lending partner Blue Owl, developers Related Midwest and CRG closed on a $75 million land purchase from U.S. Steel for a former South Side metal mill now set to be turned into the multibillion-dollar computing facility. Related, in tandem with a controversial Iraqi-British billionaire and local billionaire Joe Mansueto, also scored a key approval, which will let them build a $650 million soccer stadium for Mansueto’s Chicago Fire FC team at The 78, another long-anticipated site. The 78 is located between the South Loop and Chinatown.
The megaprojects could literally reinvent the old Chicago.
Like the quantum computing site, Letchinger’s Foundry Park is built on a defunct past. Its land once housed the city’s oldest steel factory, which was demolished in 2012. The 78’s development canvas is, similarly, an old railyard property.
Their development would chart the next phase of Chicago’s evolution from industrial powerhouse into technological hub, but they’ll have to build quickly for the city to maintain its status as one of the world’s great financial centers.
Picking teams
At first, Letchinger’s Foundry Park looked like it would be closer in scale to the planned Lincoln Yards; Letchinger and Kayne made a $60 million offer to buy the southern parcel of the megadevelopment, which Sterling Bay has hung onto with its partner JP Morgan Investment Management.
But Sterling Bay wouldn’t budge, even raising the prospect of litigation during JDL’s negotiations for the rest of the site.
“I told Kayne, ‘We’re done, let it go,’” Letchinger said. “‘I can promise you that the city is going to do what we need to do if we just have the north side. We do not need the south side.’”
But Letchinger isn’t afraid of a fight or of being the small guy in a lopsided contest. He played rec basketball well into adulthood, despite a frame safely below six feet — he says it’s the one thing he misses from being younger.
“Especially at my size, it takes a toll on your body. Because I had to play hard. But I loved playing down low,” he said.
He still loves the game. But even as a spectator, he can spot an all-star.
In April, he was courtside at the United Center for a Bulls post-season game. JDL was already gearing up to make a run at Lincoln Yards; the next month, Letchinger would meet with Kayne to hash out the financing.
But that day, just a few seats away, he spotted Keating Crown, Sterling Bay’s managing principal and main financial backer, and great-grandson of one of the city’s core industrialists, Henry Crown.
The Bulls lost the play-in that day, and Letchinger didn’t approach Crown; although they’ve had a congratulatory phone call since JDL and Kayne took over the north side of Lincoln Yards. Letchinger said Gloor has been less friendly.
But victory isn’t unimaginable.
While Letchinger isn’t set on acquiring the southern side of the project anymore, he’s open to considering another offer if it comes back to the market.
He envisions building a school on part of that land as an enhancement for Foundry Park. Perhaps he’d develop some more housing, he thinks, though less dense than the plans for across the river.
For now, Sterling Bay is the southern parcel’s steward.
“If we do something on the south side, at this point it’s going to be, candidly, with their blessing and knowledge,” Letchinger said. “Not because I’m worried about litigation. There is none. It’s just not necessary. I never intended to have an issue with them.”