Robert J. Burk II

Burk has spent 30 years in the Chicago market, going from general contractor to developer and back again in leading UrbanStreet Group on more than 70 projects ranging from Morton Grove to Buffalo Grove in the Chicago metro market and from Madison, Wisconsin, to St. Louis, Missouri in the broader Midwest.

It’s the contracting side that he views as secret sauce, with a construction model that “has allowed us to do a lot of very, very unique projects, because we did them ourselves,” Burk says. 

His longstanding operating method and style is getting tested by one of the biggest examples of a unique trend in his home territory, where campuses that once housed the likes of McDonald’s, Sears and All-State in Chicago’s suburbs have been vacated, offering big blank spaces and opportunities for redevelopment.

UrbanStreet is one of the biggest developers in Schaumburg, where it is in the first phase of an overhaul of the former 1.8 million-square-foot Motorola campus. The initial $175 million worth of work on the 225-acre redevelopment recently started construction as the District at Veridian, with plans for 321 apartments and 60,000 square feet of retail.

Burk remains closely involved across the full development lifecycle, directing projects from site acquisition and entitlements through design, construction and marketing. That hands-on approach provides further control over execution, while also concentrating risk as project scale and capital exposure increase, factors worth watching as the Schaumburg redevelopment proceeds.