Market Conditions: St. Clair at Cityfront Plaza is Canceled
Several of you have e-mailed me with the news that the St. Clair at Cityfront Plaza, phase 2 of the Cityfront development in Streeterville, has been canceled.
Crain’s is now confirming it.
Developer Centrum Properties Inc. has killed a proposed 41-story condominium building in Streeterville, selling the site to North Shore developer David Hovey, who plans to eventually build an apartment tower there.
Mr. Hovey paid nearly $20 million late last week for a site at St. Clair and Illinois streets, sources say, where Centrum had proposed the second stage of the Cityfront Plaza project. The three-tower Cityfront Plaza site stretches from St. Clair to Fairbanks Court along the north side of Illinois Street.
Sales for the second phase, called the St. Clair, had stalled after more than 15 months of marketing, with contracts for just 40% of the 261 units in the proposed building. The first phase of Cityfront Plaza, a 281-unit building at the corner of Fairbanks and Illinois, was completed last fall and is about 90% sold.
Additionally, the parking lot across the street from 600 N. Fairbanks, where the Hot Diggity Dog used to be, is again in play. It was recently fenced off.
Meanwhile, in another sign of the dramatic challenges facing developers, Draper & Kramer has hired Chicago-based Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. to market a site at 245 E. Ohio St. Just this summer, the developer was planning to build a high-rise with 220 condos and a 220-room hotel.
The marketing effort comes after the collapse of talks to sell the site to Chicago-based Equity Residential, sources say.
Developer scraps Streeterville condo project, sells site [Crain’s, Oct 8, 2008]
Saw that coming a mile away. Once I saw that they never finished that model apartment they were building on the street level it was over. Always wondered if they weren’t announcing it because they needed to hold deposits as long as possible. I confirmed once that Centrum had some initial hesitation returning deposits to people at their Miami cancellation. This could be interesting. As for the sales staff, great people and good luck.
this was a no brainer. the worst is that we lost hot diggity dogs. all those times I walked past there on my way to a friend’s apt. and I didn’t stop there once. I really regret that now.
Does anybody know what the deal is of the empty lot across the street from 611 s. wells street (i.e. the Vectro and the Wells Street Tower)?
I heard it has been sold and a building is proposed to be built there with some 200 units hotels and 200 units condos.
If only we could get Hot Diggity Dogs back!
Like ChiGuy I also often walked past it and never got the chance to try it because I kept telling myself there would always be a chance in the future.
I wonder if Hot Diggity Dogs can come back. The shack (!) is still there.
Victoria,
Last I heard, Chieftain Group (an Irish developer currently building the highrise at Michigan/Cermak) has the land and is planning two highrises, one residential and one hotel. Not sure of the exact timeline on it.
Victoria/David:
The last I heard, that land is now two parcels. The smaller one is on the NE corner (Wells/Harrison) and is owned by Chieftan Group. They have posted a large billboard there, but it is mainly an ad for their current project in the true South Loop. Some preliminary renderings have been floating around, but given the current situation…..
The other parcel is L-shaped, and includes all the river front as well as the portion directly North of RiverCity, extending from the River to Wells at that point. This is apparently owned by some investors (word among the dog people is that they’re Ukrainian, but I’m not sure) who seem to be amateurs. They began to put in a surface parking lot on part of their properly, but that is on hold due to conflict with the Alderman (he apparently didn’t know they were beginning construction, and he stopped the work when the condo owners complained about the situation). They are not well-regarded by the dog people, and do very cavalier things like locking up the fence in a very amateurish way and the dog people then just cut off the locks and things continue as before. At one point they installed a fence with huge gates that promptly fell off since the hinges couldn’t support the weight of the gates. I would expect several more rounds of confict before this is all resolved – or they go bankrupt or walk away like eveyone else who’s tried to do something with this property has.
I don’t expect to see anything built on either portion any time soon, since this saga as been going on ever since the old train station was torn down decades ago. Rumor is that the entire area is a major cleanup issue, which wouldn’t surprise me since it was railway land.
As an investor in several of Optima’s projects, I wonder how they are able to pull this off. The third phase of their current Skokie highrise is selling extremely slow. I’ve heard that they have stopped building out units int he third phase because sales are so slow! They have a project in AZ going that isn’t sold out, and there are several foreclosures and short sales in that complex.
Thanks, JB and David! 🙂
i moved into fairbanks at cityfront plaza 5 mos ago. any thoughts on how the dissolution on of their planned 3 bldg complex affects the existing residence. a little sad to hear they are cancelling the project, though i honestly didn’t understand what took so long (until i read one of the above entries), just never realized centrum would sell both lots and give up all together.
MTC.
With a gun to my head and I would say a small benefit. You have 104 caceled contracts of people that liked that paticular spot. I would expect some to reinvestigate 240 E now. The people i would not want to be are the ones in the SE corner since that nice view is receeded from the property line of what would have been the mid tower and with one design change of any building that now goes there that view could be bye bye.
sorry. meant SW corner.
That building in Skokie is interesting, not to mention out of place. I always wondered who would pay big bucks for a view of the Edens Expressway and Old Orchard.