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Crain’s
Back in December of 2009 we took a retrospective look at our coverage of Pure, a much-discussed failed condo turned rental at 24 S Morgan in the West Loop. Since that time a grand jury indicted the building’s developers for running a Ponzi scheme that burned banks and investors to the tune of more than ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on June 12, 2013
Exactly five years ago today we checked up on the construction status of Mondial, a new condominium project then underway at 900 W Huron in River West, and found it approximately half complete. Mondial ran head-on into a tough condo market. Sales stalled and the original developer pulled the units from the market, offered them ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on May 13, 2013
Crain’s Chicago Real Estate Daily reported yesterday that Optima has acquired a site at 220 E Illinois immediately adjacent to its Optima Center, which is nearing completion. The Centrum-owned site, which has been on the market for a while, was zoned for up to 600 apartments, and we’d tallied that number in our at-a-glance list ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on May 9, 2013
The drumbeat of new apartment announcements in downtown Chicago continues, and we’ve updated our list and tally of them accordingly. Crain’s Chicago Real Estate Daily reported yesterday that Newcastle Ltd is purchasing the southeast corner of State and Chestnut from Loyola University Chicago and plans to build a 35-story building with 367 apartments and ground-level ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on December 12, 2012
The headline question assumes, of course, that there’s any sales momentum to stall. We recently noted that Lincoln Park 2550 hit the 50% sales mark for the second time, the first occurring four-and-a-half years ago. According to yesterday’s Crain’s Chicago Real Estate Daily, the development had closed on only 43 of its units as of ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on November 30, 2012
A very dapper Alby Gallun of Crain’s recently toured Lincoln Park 2550 in the above video, and learned that developer John Murphy “is counting on views of Lake Michigan and Lincoln Park to bring in buyers.” Prices in the half-sold high-amenity development range from $465,000 to $11.5 million. If views of Lincoln Park and the ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on November 16, 2012
From yesterday’s Crain’s Chicago Real Estate Daily: Local new-home sales are surging in the suburbs but dropping off in the city, a tale of two markets as the homebuilding business rebounds from a six-year slump. The nascent homebuilding recovery has been more sprawling than skyscraping in Chicago, with suburban new-home sales jumping nearly 22 percent ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on October 31, 2012
Crain’s Chicago Real Estate Daily is reporting that developer Enrico Plati is proposing to build 240 to 320 apartments on a site currently used for a parking lot at 601 W Jackson in the West Loop. The site is a block from Union Station and a few steps from Lou Mitchell’s. Tip: If you politely ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on October 19, 2012
A site in River North formerly occupied by Ronsley, and once one of the most sought-after development opportunities in the area, is taking another trip through the foreclosure process, according to a report from Crain’s. The site, which includes a 5-story loft building (pictured above) at the southwest corner of Kingsbury and Huron and a ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on October 10, 2012
Crain’s is reporting that Hamilton Partners is acquiring the Kraft Foods office campus at the northwest corner of Waukegan and Golf Roads. The bulk of the site, Kraft’s former corporate headquarters, is located in Glenview and a part of it is in Morton Grove. “It’s rare that you have the opportunity to acquire 57 acres ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on August 30, 2012
According to Crain’s Chicago Real Estate Daily, Guaranteed Rate Inc. has filed a federal court suit against developer Warren Barr and others alleging a “wide-ranging conspiracy” to inflate prices at Vision on State, 1255 S State, through the use of straw buyers and pumped-up appraisals. Crain’s notes that a similar suit, filed by Guaranteed Rate ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on July 23, 2012
An article in this week’s Crain’s cites anecdotal evidence of an incipient shift from rental to ownership, suggesting: … that a confluence of factors — from low interest rates to escalating rents — are starting to push would-be buyers off the fence. The anecdotes don’t mean the market has tipped from apartments, the favored choice ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on June 18, 2012
Day in and day out the best real estate reporting in Chicago can be found at Crain’s Chicago Real Estate Daily. If you want to understand what’s happening and what’s trending in Chicago real estate, you’ll want to check in frequently with Crain’s. We link most of the articles on that site from our Chicago ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on May 15, 2012
Crain’s standout real estate reporter, Alby Gallun, was just wrapping up his video shoot at Randolph Tower, 188 W Randolph St in the Loop, when I arrived for mine earlier this week. Don’t miss Gallun’s interview, above, with developer Jonathan Holtzman on the challenges in completing the building and the outlook for Chicago’s downtown apartment ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on March 30, 2012
The last few years can’t have been much fun for Thomas DiPiazza and Richard Ferro, developers who are usually mentioned by way of their political connections. Their investment in Astoria Tower went south. Last August they were hit with a $24.8 million foreclosure suit on a property at 300-310 N Michigan Ave once slated for ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on January 16, 2012
Abby Gallun from Crain’s interviews AMLI Residential CEO’s Greg Mutz on prospects for the downtown and suburban new construction rental markets in this informative video. Mutz, not surprisingly, is bullish on the location of his new AMLI River North tower, which you’ll glimpse in the video. He’s cautiously optimistic about the downtown rental market in ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on December 15, 2011
Crain’s is reporting, behind its paywall, that John Bucksbaum, former CEO of General Growth Properties, is bidding for the former New City YMCA site at Halsted and Clybourn. According to Crain’s, the current owners, Structured Development and Commonfund, acquired the property for $54.7 million in 2007 and are in default on a $43.2 million mortgage. ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on December 5, 2011
Here’s the lead paragraph from today’s Chicago Real Estate Daily on Martin Mulryan, the “point man for Old Main Post Office:” When Martin Mulryan got a call from longtime business acquaintance Bill Davies about redeveloping a post office in Chicago, he imagined “a corner shop with two old ladies.” Unless there’s more to Martin Mulryan ...
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Posted by Joe Zekas on December 1, 2011
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