Every morning in his office reception area, Albert Friedman passes a set of wooden display cases, the kind most people use to show off fine china or trophies. But Friedman’s cases are filled with old beer cans – Schlitz, Bud, Huber – battered wine bottles and dusty half-pints whose whisky was drained decades ago.
The flotsam and jetsam, collected during years of rehabbing River North’s historic buildings, serves as a constant reminder of the neighborhood’s sordid past and how far it has traveled since Friedman, president of Friedman Properties, acquired his first building there in the late ’60s.
Today, you’re more likely to find Amstel Light and pinot noir bottles in River North, and they’re generally sitting in trash receptacles, not littering gutters and building lobbies. But when Friedman began his collecting – both of detritus and the beautiful but rundown historic buildings that housed it – the neighborhood was dominated by peep shows, winos, prostitutes and thieves.
A growing number of decrepit, half-empty buildings was being torn down in River North, bounded roughly by the Chicago River on the south and west, Oak Street on the north and Michigan Avenue on the east, when Friedman arrived. That was the easiest solution for dealing with the hazards they posed.
Coming of age
Now, those historic buildings, at least the ones that weren’t demolished, have been rehabbed, and new buildings are being constructed at the rate those old buildings once disappeared in River North. The neighborhood has seen a steady stream of new residential construction, including some of the city’s most upscale developments.
In the northeast corner of the neighborhood, a spot that might be dubbed Gold Coast South, projects like The Elysian, Ten East Delaware and 50 E. Chestnut are among Chicago’s toniest new towers, with lavish amenities and most units priced at more than $1 million.
At the southern edge of the neighborhood is Trump International Hotel & Tower, the highest profile residential project under construction in Chicago, and in between are high-end developments ranging from the new Canyon Ranch Living, where the lowest-priced unit is more than $700,000, to The Ritz-Carlton Residences, a condo project with a top end of more than $9 million.
The market isn’t all, or even mostly, ultra-luxury here, and all of the action isn’t occurring on the eastern edge of River North. Comparatively affordable conversions such as Ontario Place offer condos from the mid-$200s. The western slice of the neighborhood, near the East Bank Club, has been a hive of new construction in recent years, and new residential developments are scattered throughout the neighborhood.
But if anyone had doubts, River North, the neighborhood known for its endless restaurants, elegant art galleries and tacky tourist traps, has clearly come of age as a premiere residential location.
No one is more aware of the changes – or had a greater part in them – than Friedman, who today owns a dozen blocks of the neighborhood, properties that include a hotel, offices, shops and 32 restaurants.
Before he and his colleagues dubbed it “River North,” the neighborhood was simply considered part of the massive Near North Side, a manufacturing district covered in grime (many just called it “skid row,” Friedman says). Manufacturing businesses were moving out of the city – to places like Elk Grove Village – and that left a large swath just north of the Loop full of empty warehouses and factories.
The conversions began in the late ’60s, with Friedman leading the way. River North slowly began transforming itself into a haven for creative professionals in search of “alternative” office space: artists and photographers, designers and gallery owners. It is difficult to imagine, looking at River North today and considering its proximity to the Loop and the lake, that only a handful of people lived there 30 years ago.
Restaurants, then residents
In fact, the development of the neighborhood, like the Chicago River itself, actually flowed backward, with restaurants and entertainment venues preceding full-time residents.
Pioneering restaurateur Gordon Sinclair was the first to open a high-end restaurant (called “Gordon,” in the space now occupied by Naha, 500 N. Clark St.) in the mid-1970s with the belief that people would travel to a great restaurant no matter how unseemly its immediate surroundings. And they were unseemly around Gordon, the dim streets crawling with two derelicts for every dolled-up diner.
Glenn Keefer opened Keefer’s restaurant, 20 W. Kinzie St., in 2001 after working in the general vicinity for 20 years. He recalls a seedy element in River North as late as the early 1980s. He later noticed a speedy element in the 1990s. Cars would come bounding over the Dearborn Street bridge and down into River North, he says, often T-boning east- and westbound cars, or worse, pedestrians.
“By the time they hit Hubbard sometimes they were going 50 miles per hour,” Keefer says. “You had to be a track star just to get across the street.”
Things are different these days, Keefer says: “Now you can’t move because of all the construction going on.” He is not complaining. Business is good, and River North is alive and well, as both an entertainment district and a residential neighborhood.
Residential evolution
New high-rises and loft developments picked up possibly their greatest momentum in the neighborhood during the late 1990s. Some notable developments from those days include Union Square Lofts, the Sexton Lofts and Ontario Street Lofts. These were, at the time, luxury projects with the kind of chic finishes and amenities that used to be reserved for new high-rises.
A spate of unfortunate residential buildings also went forward, bland beige towers that hurt the streetscape and were a step backward for River North. But even these projects added to the neighborhood’s residential base, encouraging more convenience retail and putting feet on the street.
The latest towers underway or in marketing are of much better quality – some with vintage-looking designs and some modern. In the northeast corner of the neighborhood, The Elysian, Ten East Delaware and 50 E. Chestnut play on the fact that they’re just south of the Gold Coast and just west of Magnificent Mile shopping.
In marketing materials, some of these projects even identify themselves as being in the Gold Coast. Given their level of pricing and luxury, that’s no surprise. The full-floor condos at 50 E. Chestnut are priced from $2.5 to $3.4 million. The 133 condos at Ten East Delaware are priced from just under half a million to around $2.3 million. Developer Prime Group, Inc. has a deal with the nearby Talbott Hotel, which will provide room service, maid service and concierge services to Ten East Delaware residents.
Luxury spreading
The new high-end housing continues as you head south, with projects like The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Canyon Ranch Living and 30 W. Erie.
How luxurious are they? Canyon Ranch Living, a tower planned by Related Midwest for 680 N. Rush St., will include a 75,000-square-foot “wellness center,” where residents can get a massage, take a yoga class, swim in a lap pool and have access to a team of physicians, behaviorists, therapists, nutritionists, physiologists and nurses. Prices here ranged from the $700s to $4 million in mid-May.
In the heart of the neighborhood, Schillaci Birmingham Development’s 30 W. Erie project includes just 20 units – two per floor – priced from around $1 million to $1.5 million. Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture came up with a traditional design – brick, stone, mansard roof – for 30 W. Erie, just as architect Lucien Lagrange went with European-influenced stone-heavy designs at Ten East Delaware and The Elysian, 11 E. Walton St.
Other current projects such as Superior 110, 110 W. Superior St., and Walton on the Park, 1 W. Walton St., have a wider range of prices and sleek contemporary designs with clean lines and floor-to-ceiling glass.
The project underway with the highest profile not just in River North but in the entire city, however, has, in some ways, an unlikely River North location. Trump Tower, 401 N. Wabash Ave., sits on the riverfront site of the old Chicago Sun-Times building, flanked by the Wrigley Building and the IBM Building, in a spot associated more with business than residential uses.
But the views from the riverfront 92-story tower, which will include a luxury hotel, will be hard to beat. And with 472 residential condos, 286 hotel condominiums and a wide array of services, Trump Tower will essentially be a vertical neighborhood all on its own. Prices range from the high $500s to $9.6 million at Trump, which is rising steadily, already stopping passersby who measure the tower’s progress from Wacker Drive or the Michigan Avenue Bridge.
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A 24-hour neighborhood
“There’s more development and more residents moving into the area than ever before,” says Heather Imhoff, executive director of the River North Association, a business community organization. “The reason people want to live in River North is that we are the restaurant capital of Chicago. We are the design district of Chicago. There is a really cool creative spirit here, just a unique, entrepreneurial feel.”
And despite what increasingly looks like Gold Coast housing with Gold Coast prices, River North has a different atmosphere, according to Imhoff.
“It’s a sophisticated but not stuffy neighborhood,” Imhoff says. “It’s not like stuffy Gold Coast old-money-sophisticated. It’s more contemporary and modern and active-sophisticated.”
Becoming more of a 24-hour playground with every passing month, it seems, River North has more 4 a.m. liquor licenses than any other neighborhood in the city, Imhoff says. “That could be a pro or con, depending on who you talk to,” she adds.
Nightlife was obviously a plus for many buyers at Terrapin Properties’ condo conversion of the west tower at Grand Plaza, a massive twin high-rise complex at State and Grand. Terrapin had about 50 of 283 total units, priced from the $300s to more than $1 million, remaining for sale at the project in early May. Grand Plaza’s 457-unit east tower, which Terrapin does not own, will remain rental apartments.
Good, bad and ugly
River North residents like having quick access to the best selection of restaurants in Chicago, and they like the nearby galleries. Many are less fond of the gargantuan neon guitar outside the Hard Rock Café, the super-sized golden arches of the new McDonald’s or the frog with a thyroid condition perched atop the Rainforest Café – all in a touristy section of the neighborhood that looks like a mini-Las Vegas.
The neighborhood went through much the same growing pains that Times Square in New York did in its so-called “Disney-fication.” In that housecleaning initiative, the Midtown entertainment hub shed its longstanding seedy atmosphere and rolled out the welcome mat for squeaky-clean yet painfully bland corporate tenants. Friedman acknowledges his role as River North’s pied piper, but he also says he obviously cannot control every development that occurs there.
“There was a movie once called ‘The Good, The Bad and the Ugly,'” Friedman says. “I think we have it all here.” He later went on to say, “Having a barbecue hanging out over the street, or a frog, certainly wouldn’t be my first choice.”
River North is a study in contrasts, upscale housing on one block, art galleries on another, Hooters and Hard Rock on another. The touristy schlock might limit the amount or type of residential building in the section it dominates, but it does not appear to have hurt building nearby.
Shaping development
It is perhaps too early to tell how much development might be too much in River North, or how the neighborhood will grow in coming years. The challenge for any mixed-use neighborhood is finding the right balance. That’s especially complicated when the mix is as varied as it is in River North.
“The first guy in says it’s great,” says James Loewenberg, whose company, Magellan Development Group, built Grand Plaza in 2003. “The second guy in says it’s great, and by the time the 10th guy gets in, the first guy says it’s overcrowded. You never want to be the first guy in or the last guy in, I guess.”
Brian Israel lives in a turn-of-the-century timber-and-masonry loft building at Grand and Kingsbury. A resident of River North for 11 years, he has seen dramatic changes in the neighborhood, even on the once-quiet western edge where he lives.
“It’s night and day,” says Israel, who is also the president of the River North Residents Association. “We were on the frontier when we moved here. It literally was quiet at night. There was hardly anything going on at night, or even during the day for that matter.”
Now the place is humming, and Israel’s organization is constantly pushing for self-sufficiency in development (parking, indoor dog runs), and more open space. “But it’s unrealistic to think that desirable land is going to go undeveloped in a desirable neighborhood,” he says.
So the organization goes for what it can, and sometimes that means simply pushing for cosmetic beauty.
“For example, we always push for more open space instead of just massive blocks of buildings with no respect to the street,” he says. “We like setbacks, open space, pocket parks; we like lighter finishes and more glass; we tend to encourage streetscaping – the traditional street lamps, and historic-referencing trash receptacles and benches.”
The river decade
In other words: fewer frogs, more old-school touches that remind you that you are in a city and not the Mall of America.
Friedman says he visited the SoHo neighborhood in New York decades ago and liked what he saw: warehouses converted, historic charm preserved. While some of River North’s history has faded, it’s far from gone. Stunning historic buildings that have been meticulously rehabbed remain, but as Israel puts it, “It’s not a neighborhood of seven-story converted loft buildings anymore.”
But Friedman is bent on preserving what remains of River North’s historic character as the neighborhood grows – and there’s plenty of growth yet to come, he says.
“You can’t look at any real estate cycle in a year or 18-month cycle,” Friedman says. “It’s really a decade process. I think the next decade will be the decade of the Chicago River.”
Friedman maintains his office in the historic Reid-Murdoch Center on the north bank of the river at LaSalle Street. He restored that building, along with Courthouse Place, the century-old former Cook County courthouse at Dearborn and Hubbard, and the once-doomed Medinah Temple and Tree Studios, in addition to others.
“If you continually destroy your past, it’s like taking all of your baby pictures and throwing them out one day and saying, ‘I don’t remember anything,'” he says. “The best cities in the world have respect for the past.”
This is certainly true, even if the mementos of that past, a period full of gamblers, thieves, prostitutes and flophouses, are old beer cans, cigarette packs and whisky bottles. No – especially if they are.