Three-bedrooms aplenty at Bucktown Point

Bucktown Station

How tough is it to sell a home on Western Avenue? Tough enough that a lot of developers try to land cross-street addresses, which at least have the benefit of looking attractive at first glance, even if those addresses don’t actually fool anyone who bothers to pay the homes a visit.

Still, sometimes I wonder if the street gets a bad rap. Sure, Western’s a busy thoroughfare, but residents are almost guaranteed a bus stop somewhere within a block or two of their front doors, and if they choose to live at, say, the corner of Western and Winnebago, they’ll have a big Blue Line station as a next-door neighbor. Is that not enough to counteract Western’s stigma? Or is there such thing as being too close to a 24-hour ‘L’ station, what with its regular racket of screeches and clacks?

I ask the question because I pass by Paramount HomesBucktown Point (or is it Bucktown Station? The signs say one thing and the engraved nameplate say another…) at 1850 N Winnebago Ave every morning and every evening, and the place always seems so quiet. We’ve never had much luck getting up-to-date info about Paramount’s various “Station” projects, and in this case, I’ve finally turned to the MLS and the Cook County sales records to see what I can glean about its status.

One of Bucktown Point’s three 1,391 square-foot two-bedrooms sold in July for $370,000; the other two didn’t surface in a sales search or on the MLS, and were marked “sale pending” on the project’s Web site.

On the other hand, all 12 of the building’s three-bedroom homes are still listed on the MLS. They have 2.5 to three bathrooms and 1,833 to 2,256 square feet of living space, and range in price from the $530s to the $590s. The Bucktown Point Web site notes that a couple of these units have sales pending and a couple more are “reserved,” but they’re still surfacing in listing searches, for what it’s worth.

Homes at Bucktown Point have oak hardwood floors, granite countertops, stainless-steel appliances, marble bathroom floors, Kohler or Grohe fixtures, gas fireplaces, washer / dryer hookups and private decks. Garage parking was available at no additional charge earlier this year, something Mark found a little odd, given that Paramount has promoted the project as a “Transit Oriented Development,” both for its proximity to the Blue Line and for the presence of two ZipCars. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

Most of the ground-floor retail area remains unsold, but the southernmost space is actually a bustling place these days thanks to the presence of the Challengers comic-book store. I can’t say whether that’s a turn-on for potential buyers, but it’s certainly a little different than the usual dry-cleaners or beauty salon.

Rate and review Bucktown Point at NewHomeNotebook.com.

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