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We thought we’d seen it all, until now. Meet “Artie,” the star of a couple of wacky, zany videos at the Web site for Mesirow Financial’s condo project, R+D659. Artie is a slightly unhinged Chaplin-esque butcher who apparently was frozen in his West Loop freezer in 1908. The jaunty Artie was recently thawed out by a “mysterious heat source” (ged it? The hot condo market!) only to discover, much to his delight, that his old butcher shop at Randolph and Desplaines has been replaced by a modernist condo building.
Not content to leave it at that, the R+D659 sales office is dishing out restaurant vouchers to prospective buyers who utter Artie’s name. Mesirow wants you to stay tuned for more madcap adventures, and is inviting you to a party, hosted by Artie, in February. Last week we mentioned that another Web site cast the rivalry between R+D659 and nearby condo development Emerald, as a Mods v Greens standoff. So what sort of salvo will Emerald fire back at R+D? Here’s hoping that Emerald pulls out the big guns – perhaps the Green Lantern?
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{ 7 comments }
You’ve got to be kidding me!! Are they struggling to sell these units or what?
Did the meat locker not get demolished when they tore the old building down?
I went to the sales center the other day and the units are pretty nice. After waiting for 30 minutes for an agent, the desk girl told me to come back another time. I guess they dont really want to sell these that bad….
One other thing about this development:
They had all the floor plans on the wall and they put a little sticker next to the units that were allready sold. Acording to the stickers, all of the studios were sold and hardly any of the other units were sold.
This tells me that one person or company bought all of the studios to rent out or to flip. If this is the case, I wonder how many untis they have sold to people that will live there?
I had also heard this development includes a substantial affordable unit component. Can anyone confirm this? Perhaps they account for a large percentage of the units already sold?
OMG this is so pathetic I don’t even know where to start….
1) The ad for the one-bedroom says ‘for the same $1,058 mortgage payment you could own a $210,000 R&D home or a $179,000 condo somewhere else”. Folks, they forget to the mortgage payment things like…association dues, taxes, maintenance….and they used an 5.3% interest rate!
2) Why don’t they compete on price? Why keep prices artificially high with crazy incentives, weirdo marketing, and toxic financing. Don’t they realize that people would buy these condos if they were priced so that people could actually afford them???!?!?
I’d hate to see the origination and other fees on the loans from their “preferred” lender to make up for a 5.3% interest rate.
So their target market is idiots. Or first-time buyers.
1.) On the interest rate thing, you dont lock that in until you close on the unit, which means it has to be built first, so we are talking 1-1.5 years in the future. Who knows what interest rates are going to be then? I sure dont want to lock myself into buying something today which I might not be able to afford when I actually “buy” it.
2.) They dont actually have any units selling for $210,000 – but does this shock anyone? Bait and switch.
3.) Seriously, why is it so hard for the price to come down? They could sell out in a month if the price was right and they didnt waste money on stupid marketing.
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