Some real estate developers collect cars, others boats. As he was collecting buildings in River North (about a dozen solid blocks of them), developer Albert Friedman, president of Friedman Properties, also collected flotsam and jetsam from the old industrial structures he rehabbed and from the tired sites on which he built new in the neighborhood.
Today, you’re more likely to find Amstel Light and merlot bottles in River North, and they’re generally in trash receptacles, not littering gutters and building lobbies. But every morning on the way to his office, Friedman, who did more than anyone to rebuild the neighborhood once known as skid row, passes a colorful reminder of River North’s past. Stay tuned next week for our video interview with Albert Friedman.