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We’re hoping developer Rokas International finishes off its 2800 Chicago development in Humboldt Park soon. The rendering shows contemporary square boxes serving as bookends for the angled middle section, which looks to be completely finished, but construction hasn’t begun on those ends yet. As it stands, the building is a bore, but hopefully those bookends will punctuate it with a bit of panache. The development has 33 three-bedroom condos priced from the $340s to the $370s, and prices include one parking space.
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All good things must come to an ‘end’
Puns aside, is that ground-level retail I’m seeing?
Yup, there’s retail/office space on the ground floor.
That appears to be ground-level vacant space.
From what I see as I drive around, there’s a very high vacancy rate in all the new ground-level commercial. I’d guesstimate the vacancy rate at about 30% or more along Belmont Ave from Ashland to the river, for example.
Joe, part of the problem here with reference to the vacancies is this: these are commercial condos on the ground floor. Some genious builder devised this concept a little while back. It went away for a while. Then it came back. In West Town! Why? Most of the businesses that are going to go into an area like this (still on the edge of what may or may not become a hot neighborhood) are risky businesses that do not have the capital to shell out $250K for the property in addition to the overhead they have to carry. And there’s 11 of them on the ground floor. Go around the corner, and there’s another eight buildings with commercial condos for sale. Go down Chicago and there are at least another twenty between California and Western. That’s millions of dollars in commercial condos aimed at start-up businesses. This area is not there yet, either. I really do like the area. There are new bars/restaurants and a great little coffee shop at Augusta and California (Humboldt Pie). But, as I’ve argued before, the balance between rentals and ownership is a delicate balance. If I were to believe in these fly by night builders, it would be because they have faith enough to hold on to the ground space themselves for a couple of years and help develop it. Unfortunately, they don’t give a sh-t and what happens is that the space sits vacant and becomes susceptible to break-ins. There was also a little bit of a disturbance today just a few blocks from here. Something about the police stopping some men on their way to do something bad.
Being unable to sell something isn’t the same as having “faith enough to hold on” to it.
Real estate taxes on commercial condos have always been a show-stopper in Chicago, and that’s doubtless one of the issues these developers are facing.
It’s distinctly possible that the taxes are higher than what the property can command in rents in some of these areas. The long-term result could be permanently blighted commercial strips.
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