Mitch Goltz was on the verge of becoming a major multifamily builder in Chicago when he walked away.
The developer was part of a team that erected a 21-story, 248-unit building in the city’s Streeterville neighborhood, which was just refinanced for $106 million, replacing its $102 million construction loan, a signal of lenders’ faith in Midwest apartments.
And Goltz had more big multifamily development sites lined up.
But it turns out that wasn’t what he wanted — not the lawsuits from neighbors over planned developments nor the clashes with the city even when the neighbors played nice.
“The younger version of us would say let’s see if we can convince the city to say yes,” Jeremy Forman, Goltz’s longtime business partner, said.
But the real-time Goltz is taking a different tack, focusing more on retail, some of it in flyover country and much of it leased to national chains. He started a new firm, GTZ Properties, in late 2024 with Forman and a handful of others from their previous firm, GW Properties. They’re being more selective by ensuring buy-in from government, meaning that they move on quickly these days when officials aren’t sure plans are a match at first sight.
The transition hasn’t been easy, and its details hint at why operators don’t always pivot to new asset classes or regions. For Goltz, the new business means backing off housing plans after years of trying to push forward at some development sites and winding down his old firm with the final few sales of a portfolio of Chicagoland retail properties that have fetched well above $100 million total in the past couple years.
Still, Goltz is thankful he didn’t wade deeper into a multifamily market that looks to be dragging down his former partner Shai Wolkowicki at a moment when development starts are down across the Midwest and rents in existing apartment buildings are surging as a result.
“We’re not looking to tie up our resources and build 300 apartments, not because we can’t or because we don’t think it’s a good idea, but that’s not what we specialize in,” Goltz said. “We have projects going across the country that are down the fairway for the things we do.”
Retail roots
Goltz was raised to recognize successful storefronts.
His grandparents were retailers and ran a dime store on Armitage Avenue for 36 years. His father, Jay Goltz, was instrumental in shaping a stretch of Chicago’s Clybourn Avenue into a campus of design-oriented businesses starting in the late 1970s. The area morphed from a “wasteland of deteriorating and vacant industrial buildings,” per a Chicago Tribune report from 2000, into destination shopping for home goods. Jay Goltz’s stores include Jayson Home, Artists Frame Service, Chicago Art Source and Bella Moulding.
“More than ever, you kind of have to stick in your lane and go with what you know,” Goltz said in GTZ’s Highland Park office, across the street from an Artists Frame Service shop. “Retail is in my blood.”
“More than ever, you kind of have to stick in your lane.”
He has operated in commercial real estate markets for 20 years. After hauling off from Chicagoland to graduate from the University of Wisconsin in 2004, he started out as a broker for retail, industrial and development sites. In 2014, he founded GW Properties, with Wolkowicki as his partner and co-founder. They formed a reputation by building and leasing for national retail tenants with specific expansion targets — Chick-fil-A, Chipotle or specialty grocers.
On the way, Goltz locked up sites ripe for investment across Chicagoland. Some were textbook wins, including a profitable $41 million sale in 2023 of western suburban retail to Met Life Investment Management, and the redevelopment of the former Maywood Park horse racing track.
Guts and Goltz
But some of Goltz’s projects turned into bruising fights.
He sparred with Glenview officials and neighbors over a controversial plan, lost money this year unloading a Logan Square property slated for 62 apartments, and pushed a Portage Park proposal for more than 340 apartments that stalled after residents urged more housing instead of his original retail-heavy plan. In Evanston, a 25-story apartment project that would rise on top of a retail building he owns may move forward under a different developer as he looks to sell the property.
The strategy was often to buy up the dirt, secure entitlements and then hand the project off to experts in housing or, in the case of Maywood Park, even industrial specialists to split up large sites in need of makeovers. In Skokie, that meant ushering a $90 million office-to-resi conversion through approvals before passing it to DIR Development and Drake Group.
“We might only want 10 percent of a big acreage so we can do the retail on the street frontage, but we’ll bring in the right puzzle pieces to get new uses on the back of these sites,” Goltz said.
Recently, though, it became time for a change. Goltz and Wolkowicki started selling off GW’s holdings, and Goltz distanced himself from multifamily ambitions. Wolkowicki chased those dreams instead, a move that’s landed him and partner Chikoo Patel in multiple court fights.
Goltz wouldn’t comment on Wolkowicki’s conundrums, and Wolkowicki didn’t return requests for comment.
Goltz isn’t leaving the fight behind entirely. He’s ready to tussle when necessary.
In May, he overcame a courtroom clash that threatened his relationship with key CBRE brokers. “Think we are an ATM?” Goltz texted the brokers, Jon Springer and Kevin McLennan, after one of them pestered him about getting paid, records show.
While Goltz was with GW in 2023, he sued CBRE after the dealmakers filed a $6 million broker’s lien on suburban Chicago properties that Goltz’s team had planned to develop into medical office buildings before the leases fell apart. By Goltz’s account, DuPage Medical Group, the tenant represented by the brokers, was at fault for backing out of a plan, while CBRE insisted it did its part and deserved to be paid a commission. Springer responded: “I think you are a developer and we brought a great equity partner and we need to get the money in.”
The case was settled privately, and Goltz claims he made no concessions.
“Brokerage is obviously the lifeblood of our business,” he said in an interview. “But more than ever, it’s very hard to pinpoint values. Going from recognizing you have a property to recognizing you have a deal is a very big jump.”
Still swinging
However, Goltz has refined his knack for locking up development opportunities.
He’s still mulling over what to do with a four-building, 327,000-square-foot office complex in the western suburb of Oak Brook he just picked up in August for $9 million following the bankrupt previous owner Adventus Realty Trust’s $24 million loan default. There’s a chance that some of it will remain office — Goltz said there’s pent-up demand for Oak Brook workspace and the problem with the property was that the previous ownership wouldn’t fund the costs of new leasing.
“That is an exception for us,” Goltz said. “You can’t spend a living just chasing deals like Oak Brook. You have to have things in the middle.”
GTZ is looking beyond Oak Brook and developing real estate in 12 states right now. Although it specializes in repositioning properties into new uses, when it comes to retail, that philosophy now has to span conversions of big distressed buildings in dense major metros and farmland near single-family subdivisions in small and midsize towns.
Goltz doesn’t mind that some of his most lucrative deals are in markets many big-time property moguls consider flyover country. He oozes enthusiasm for the new acquisitions.
“I’ve been floored by some of these secondary markets in Ohio,” he said. “Have you heard of Lima, Ohio?”