It's only a matter of time before another big red checkerboard emerges in the 1900 block of South Calumet Avenue. The second tower from the Museum Park Place development is coming out of the ground in the Enterprise Companies' Central Station super development, and it's growing fast.
It has been a little over a month since I last posted a sales update for this building at 1901 S Calumet Ave, and it looks like they've been adding at least one floor per week. I count at least 11 residential floors on top of the parking garage, and windows have been added to the first few residential floors. When completed, the building will have 29 stories and 276 one- to three-bedroom condos.
When I spoke with Ralph Oliva from Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in August, he said a little more than half of the homes in the building had been sold, and that there were still units available in every floor plan. Prices for most of the condos run from the $250s to the $600s. There will also be west-facing townhouses starting in the $860s.
Park Kingsbury Luxury Lofts is located at 678 N Kingsbury St in River North, just a couple blocks away from the YoChicago office, but it recently occurred to us that we haven't toured the sales center since Jameson Real Estate took over the project's sales and marketing duties. To change that, I took a stroll down to Kingsbury Street yesterday and met with Jameson agent Lindsey Delrahim, who showed me around the two-bedroom furnished model.
Park Kingsbury is the only new loft development in River North listed on NewHomeNotebook.com, and it's notable for the size of the lofts that will be available. During our tour, Delrahim said the smallest loft, aside from the model, has 1,700 square feet of living space, and the largest has 3,100 square feet. Prices run from the $470s to $1.6 million.
During our chat about Joffrey Tower earlier this week, Diana Luo mentioned that Smithfield Properties would start closing units at its other new tower, SoNo, starting the first week of November.
SoNo's sales staff will move into a new sales center inside the high-rise, located at 860 W Blackhawk St on the Near North Side, on Oct. 24. Models will open up for visitation shortly thereafter, she says.
If our earlier reports are any indication, the percentage of homes under contract at SoNo has dropped steadily over the course of the year, from 65 percent in March to 60 percent in June to around 55 percent today. Prices on the low end haven't changed: One-bedroom condos still start in the $290s. On the other end of the spectrum, prices appear to have inched upward slightly - the three-bedroom "lofts" on the tower's third through sixth floors top out in the $590s instead of the $570s that we've reported through most of the year.
Luo would not confirm the rumors that Smithfield has scrapped plans for SoNo's twin tower to the east, saying only that the company had not make a decision about the project's future phases.
Construction is almost finished on One Place Condominiums at 1 E 8th St in the Loop, and the building is nearing closeout as well. Sales manager Dave Auffarth from MyCityHome Group says just 12 of the building's 96 condos are still available, and he says people are already living in the building.
About a dozen buyers have closed on their homes, according to Auffarth, and the remaining units will be ready to close within 30 to 45 days. First move-ins started in the last month of September.
The available units include two one-bedroom condos priced from the $220s to the $230s, six two-bedroom / two-baths priced from the $290s to the $320s, and four two-bedroom penthouses priced from the $360s to the $450s. Monthly assessments will run from about $325 to $450, and will cover heat, air-conditioning and AT&T Uverse cable TV, Auffarth says.
Auffarth isn't surprised the building is close to selling out, and says it's not unusual for a developer to sell 90 percent of the condos in a building by the time they start delivering.
He also expects a few investors to rent out their units, but he says none of those buyers have closed yet.
Regarding the retail space on State Street, Xsport Fitness has claimed the largest space and will have a pool and a three-story climbing wall. Lou Malnati's Pizzeria and UFood Grill are both expected to open within the next month. Aufforth says several interested parties are interested in the building's two vacant retail spaces but wouldn't offer any names.
In the second video from my private tour through Trump International Hotel & Tower, Leah Harriet and Cyndy Salgado of Koenig & Strey GMAC Real Estate show me around the high-rise's fitness center and indoor pool on the 14th floor and the restaurant Sixteen on the 16th floor. Harriet and her sales staff recently moved from the IBM Plaza building into a new sales center in the tower. Trump has not furnished any residential condos for visitation, but models could be ready in a variety of floor plans once construction wraps next year, Salgado says.
Keep an eye on Yo for the third and final video from my latest Trump trip, or watch it now on the YoChicago YouTube channel.
Every morning, we survey scores of local and national newspapers and magazines, amateur and professional blogs and other interesting Web sites in search of stories that are relevant to Chicago home buyers. We add those stories to own news feed, thereby creating a one-stop news source for anyone interested in Chicago's neighborhoods and new-home market.
Last Sunday developer Michael Hughes showed off two 60s T-Birds and two 70s Corvettes from his personal collection at a new home he's recently completed at 339 Linden St in Winnetka. Fields Northfield brought along a Jeep that will do 0-60 in 4.2 seconds.
The price of the 5-bedroom, 6 full and 2 half-bath home has been reduced from $4M to $3,348,000. In the video Hughes tells me that he might throw in a Corvette – or two – for a buyer who makes a full-price offer.
Coldwell Banker's Linda Martin staged the open house for the home, drewing a crowd of car aficionados and, possibly, a prospective home buyer or two. Guests at the event were asked to bring donations for the New Trier Township Pantry. Yes, folks, there are some low-income residents in Winnetka
I also visited the home several months ago, and you can see a four-part walk-through at our Winnetka playlist.
The Legacy at Millennium Park certainly looks a bit drearier than it did in the construction update Joe posted in late July, but it also looks quite a bit taller. The most notable development over the past two months, at least from the angle from which this was taken on Wabash Avenue, is the addition of windows to the first 25 or so stories.
Of the supertall buildings that are proposed, planned or currently under construction in Chicago, Mesa Development's 72-story high-rise at 60 E Monroe St in the Loop is perhaps the most overlooked. But as others struggle to secure construction loans, this one continues to climb skyward, and before long it will be difficult to ignore.
A call to the sales center this afternoon revealed that 48 of the building's 356 condos are currently available - three less than Joe reported in June. The price points have tightened up a little bit though, which could mean that the least expensive units were sold, or that the prices have gone up.
One-bedrooms, which were priced from the $430s in June, are now priced from the $460s; two-bedrooms start in the $650s, whereas they started in the $640s in June, and three-bedrooms range from $1.26 million to $2.59 million. Penthouses start at $4.25 million. The sales agent I spoke with said most of the remaining condos have two and three bedrooms.
Construction on the building is expected to be completed by fall 2009.
According to Smithfield's Diana Luo, 18 homes are still available in the 33-story, 208-unit high-rise, located at 8 E Randolph St in the Loop's Theater District. That's quite a change from our March sales update, which said that only four condos in the tower's upper levels were still for sale. The MLS also lists 18 condos at the tower including some resales, so it's possible that Luo simply passed along information on all its available units, not just the unsold ones.
The units are a mix of east- and west-facing one-bedroom / one-baths with 834 to 925 square feet, priced from the $290s to the $350s, and northeast-, northwest- and southwest-facing two-bedroom / two-baths with 1,348 to 1,460 square feet, priced from the $460s to the $520s.
Individual parking spaces are priced at $60,000, or packaged in pairs for $90,000, Luo says.
Joffrey Tower, of course, takes its name from the Joffrey Ballet, which has occupied three floors of the building since August.
It has been a little over a month since I last posted a sales update for this building at 1901 S Calumet Ave, and it looks like they've been adding at least one floor per week. I count at least 11 residential floors on top of the parking garage, and windows have been added to the first few residential floors. When completed, the building will have 29 stories and 276 one- to three-bedroom condos. 
