The Dirt Lawyer's Blog Archive

I guess I can talk more about this deal now: in a followup to a previous Crain's piece , Globest.com reports that the New City mixed-use project being developed by Structured Development and Commonfund Realty at Clybourn and Halsted is a go. Dirt should finally start moving by January to meet construction milestones. Why the delay? Well, you've gotta adapt to the market and changing conditions, and that makes a few months' delay worthwhile. Here, this means less residential and some more commercial/retail. As my friend Jeff Berta points out: "We originally envisioned condo uses, but housing market conditions shifted, so we reduced the number of units in total to 280," Jeff Berta, senior director of real estate development with Structured, tells GlobeSt.com. "We also saw opportunities for hotel and theater entertainment uses, which we began to realize were a good fit with our location. We replaced some of those units with space for those commercial use...

Crain's is just a treasure trove of information. Tom Corfman and his team just have this beat covered down pat. They had three stories today that caught my interest: In the completely unshocking department, Sam Zell may convert parts of the Tribune Tower into condos. Any person in the dirt biz saw that coming the minute he laid eyes on the company. Nonetheless, it's news. The New City project near North and Halsted being developed by Structured Development and Commonfund will build luxury apartments instead of condos to go with the 75% leased retail portion of the project. JV negotiations are ongoing. I've known about this for a while, but I have this thing about client confidentiality.... My friend and client, Dan Lukas, put it succinctly in his own inimitable way: “The condo market is in the toilet. With the market’s sales velocity, we could be selling one to two units a month … It really doesn’t matter how good the product is; there’s no buyers and there’s no...

I have said time and again that I do not make news, I just report it. So, if I know about a deal (whether I am working on it or not), I don't leak it. Not my job, and I do not even want to think about the privilege and confidentiality issues that abound. (I also don't want my clients worrying about it.) The good news is that GlobeSt.com reported today that a deal I worked on last year, the redevelopment of the New City YMCA property in Chicago, is moving along. Roundy's Supermarkets, which we discussed here recently, has signed an 80,000 sf lease. (Full disclosure: I did not negotiate that deal.) Other tenants are in the works, and, as my friend Jeff Berta says, “Unfortunately, we cannot announce any particular names at this time.” They are still talking about how to deal with some of the residential portions of the property. I'm looking forward to a summer groundbreaking for multiple reasons.

It was great to see another nice write-up in Crain's about my client -- and landlord -- Structured Development LLC , and their money partner (which I used to represent before going out on my own), Commonfund . They teamed up to buy the old Bowman Dairy property at 1401 North Kingsbury and are planning to eventually convert it into a mixed-use project like the one nearing completion on Halsted Street and Blackhawk anchored by the British School of Chicago and REI .