Chicago’s lakefront rarely sees much in the way of new development since most of the prime waterfront real estate is already built-up. But in the Uptown neighborhood, a team of developers recently revealed a more creative plan to bring 500 units to the corner of Irving Park Road and Marine Drive, just west of Lake Shore Drive.
Here, co-developers Keith Giles and CA Ventures want to convert the multi-building campus of the former Immaculata High School into 275 housing units. Under the plan, a new 23-story tower would replace the parcel’s parking lot and contain an additional 220 independent senior living, assisted living, and memory care units. The project would provide a total of 140 parking spaces.
Design firms Perkins Eastman and Level Architecture are listed as part of the development team in a community presentation shared by the office of 46th Ward Alderman James Cappleman. The slide show noted that the renderings are to demonstrate the size of the development and that the final building design is “subject to change.”
The historic Immaculata campus was designed by notable Prairie School architect Barry Byrne, who completed the first building in 1922. Byrne worked under Frank Lloyd Wright and supervised the construction of Unity Temple before starting his own practice, where he designed Chicago-area single-family homes as well as numerous Catholic buildings. The Immaculata High School changed hands several times since then and was most recently home to the American Islamic College.
The proposed residential conversion and tower addition would need to comply with the site’s existing landmark designation. The plan requires a zoning change from the Chicago City Council but will need the support of the Buena Park Neighbors and the 46th Ward Zoning and Development Committee before heading to City Hall.
The Uptown parcel is one of only a handful of lakefront locations in the city that can support future high-rise development. It joins the former Chicago Spire site at 400 North Lake Shore Drive, the massive Prairie Shores Lakefront proposal at the former Michael Reese Hospital Site, and a vacant parcel at Lake Shore Drive and Waveland Avenue, where developers have proposed a 19-story rental tower.
Meanwhile, down in the River North neighborhood, a developer hopes to bring to life an office project he’s been eyeing there while the job market is still humming.
Jump-starting a plan that he unveiled in 2017, Albert Friedman has hired Cushman & Wakefield to lease a 674,000-square-foot (63,000-square-meter) office building his firm aims to develop at 450 North Dearborn Street.
The proposed 30-story structure dubbed the Rivere, in reference to a historic hotel that once operated on the block, would rise at the corner of Dearborn and Illinois streets and include a rebuilt Engine Co. 42 fire station on part of its ground floor, replacing the existing one at 55 West Illinois Street.
It’s the latest iteration of a public-private partnership for the site that Friedman and the city announced in April 2017. The proposed office building was in the hunt to win tech giant Salesforce as its anchor tenant in 2018 before the San Francisco-based company ultimately decided on a new tower planned at Wolf Point for its rapidly expanding local office.
Now Friedman, chairman, and CEO of Friedman Properties, has redesigned the building with architecture firm Goettsch Partners in search of a new tenant to help kick it off. It’s a bet on the rush of companies snapping up workspaces in the central business district.
Friedman faces a lot of competition for tenants. New office buildings are under construction and in planning stages in the West Loop and Fulton Market District, and even older-but-revamped Central Loop buildings have proven to be attractive to fast-growing companies.
But there aren’t many options in River North. The submarket’s 10.4 percent vacancy at the end of 2019 is below the 13.7 percent average for all downtown, and vacancy among top-tier buildings in River North is a minuscule 5.3 percent. Those numbers, and the lack of large blocks of available space in the neighborhood, are working in Friedman’s favor and form the basis for other new office projects that Chicago developer North Wells Capital recently announced nearby on Erie and Huron streets.
Cushman & Wakefield is playing up the Rivere’s location and amenities like private tenant terraces, a rooftop lounge and a large lobby that includes a bar and restaurant.
Friedman also envisions turning the property into the centerpiece of a three-block “network of pedestrian thoroughfares” he is calling “the Mews” running along alleys from Grand Avenue to Kinzie Street, according to a Cushman marketing flyer. The alleys, which include popular neighborhood spots like Three Dots and a Dash and Ramen-San, would “encourage exploration and provide access to food and beverage experiences utilizing upgraded landscaping, paving, lighting and public art,” Cushman said in a statement.
As it searches for an anchor tenant, Friedman plans to move forward in 2020 with the first phase of construction, which includes the new firehouse just west of the current one.
Per its redevelopment agreement with the city, Friedman will build and pay for the estimated US$20.2 million fire station and pay the city US$5 million for the existing one. The developer also will contribute US$10 million to the city’s Neighborhood Opportunity Bonus program for the zoning rights to build a larger, more dense building on the site.
Known by many as the “Mayor of River North,” Friedman got his start there in 1970 when he inherited a hot dog stand at 500 North Clark Street and a neighboring hotel from his father. His real estate firm helped redevelop much of the area, where many of the more than 50 properties it owns are located.
He remains very active in the neighborhood as one of his ventures paid US$25 million last year for the Medinah Temple building at 600 North Wabash Avenue, a landmark the firm redeveloped 17 years ago. Friedman already owned the land beneath the Moorish Revival structure and bought the building from Macy’s, which runs a Bloomingdale’s home furnishings store there that it plans to move to 900 North Michigan Avenue.
For more on these stories, go to Curbed Chicago and Crain’s Chicago Business.