Stein says that construction and marketing for the project began about a year ago, and since then one home has sold. "When the project started, a year ago, this wasn't a market for pre-construction, so we're finding we need to have a model," Stein says, adding that a furnished model will be ready in a few weeks.
All of the townhouses have three-bedrooms and two baths, and they each have about 2,000 square feet of living space and an attached two-car garage. Prices range from the $390s to the $550s. Stein says the four-level homes are organized with common and family areas on the lower two floors, with the three bedrooms on the top two floors.
Structural construction is completed, but the unsold homes have not been finished out yet. I'm interested to see what this development looks like in person, because the rendering shows a very modern building, similar in some ways to The Wabash Club in the South Loop, but in this photo I pulled from the development Web site shows a somewhat more conventional building.
After I had finished my day of open house visits last week, I passed by The Parkland Condominiums, another new Chicago Graystone development at 2730 N Ashland Ave in Lincoln Park. I didn't have a chance to go in and poke around, but I did pause to take a photo of the building, which could easily be mistaken for one Graystone's other nearby developments, like The Chelsea or The Catalina.
Jim Miller from Jameson Real Estate is marketing the 16-unit development, and he says that some of the common areas are sill under construction, but some of the homes should be ready for delivery by the end of January. A furnished model is now open in the building.
"They might not be the biggest, but they’re going to be brand-new and sophisticated, and they’re going to have all the bells and whistles," Miller says of the homes in the building. Miller says the condos are competitively priced with other new-construction condos in the area.
With one-bedrooms that measure 729 square feet, The Parkland does have some units that are smaller and less expensive than what's typically found in that part of Lincoln Park, but in terms of price per square foot, they're actually a bit more expensive than the remaining homes in The Catalina, which is located just a couple blocks to the south. According to my calculations, condos in The Parkland are priced from $356 to $439 per square foot, while the remaining two- and three-bedroom homes are priced from $241 to $324 per square foot.
One-bedroom / one-baths in The Parkland are priced from the $300s to the $310s, two-bedroom / two-baths are priced from the $420s to the $510s, and three-bedroom / two-baths are priced from the $490s to the $560s. Garage parking, which is valued at $30,000, is currently included in the price.
Two months ago, Joe reported that foundation work had finally finished, and that The Enterprise Companies and Mesirow Financial Real Estate's Walton on the Park high-rise development would finally start climbing vertically. The photos he posted showed a big crane towering over a small elevator core and a few cement columns that will serve as the base of the two adjoining 37- and 32-story high-rises.
Now, eight weeks down the road, the lower levels are finally starting to take shape at 2 W Delaware Pl, and the construction site is coming to life. It's hard to say how much work will be done on this development in the coming months. As anyone reading this in Chicago surely knows, snow started falling early this morning, and it hasn't let up much since (the above photo was taken last week).
The southern tower of Walton on the Park is set for completion in 2010, and as Ralph Oliva from Coldwell Banker told Joe last winter, once 75 percent of the homes in the south tower are sold, construction will begin on the north tower.
As of August, about 50 percent of the 198-unit south tower had been sold. Together, the two towers in Walton on the Park will comprise 391 one- to three-bedroom condos that will be priced from the $550s to $2.8 million.
As Muscare explains in the video, the "soft loft"-style homes come with contemporary lighting fixtures from Lightology (which can be seen in the photo at right), cherry flooring and they are wired for surround sound. The walls are made of thick concrete, and Muscare told one potential buyer that they could pound away on the walls with a hammer, and the neighbors wouldn't hear a thing.
The last time we had written about the development was in March, when the building was still under construction. At that time, Joe reported that half of the homes in the 24-unit development had been sold. Now, according to the price sheet I picked up at the open house, 11 homes - just less than half - have been sold. Muscare says the developer is currently offering $5,000 credits at closing, and the next three buyers will receive free garage parking spaces that are normally valued at $25,000.
According to the price sheet, one-bedroom / one-bath condos are priced from the $290s to the $330s, and two-bedrooms with one and two baths are priced from the $340s to the $420s. Assessments run from $109 to $173 per month.
"We'll have a knock-down, drag-out for the next six months over this. …This project will be completed and sold out before this gets resolved. … This is, in my mind, legal stupidity."
-Donald Trump's attorney Steven Schlesinger from the New York-based firm Jaspan Schlesinger.
On Friday, Crain's reported that Deutsche Bank Trust Co. Americas, the primary lender for the Trump International Hotel and Tower, filed a suit against Trump, alleging that $334.2 million still had not been paid on the $640-million construction loan. The suit calls for Trump to make good on a $40-million personal guarantee to the bank he signed back in February.
On Saturday, Schlesinger told the Chicago Tribune that the building would be completed according to schedule, within five months, and he was confident that construction financing would be secured early this week.
"We have every belief that they are going to fund either Monday night or Tuesday morning," Schlesinger told the Trib. "The monthly draws on the construction loan have been in the $20-million range. We were working on the documents for the draw and I think they were substantially completed Wednesday night."
When the Trib report ran on Saturday, Schlesinger hadn't yet laid eyes on the lawsuit, but he offered a prediction: "It's going to cause a lot of legal fees."
One thing I learned while visiting open houses last weekend is that Chicago Graystone Development has more new condo developments in Lake View than I had previously known about. While talking with Dave Salyers of Jameson Real Estate at Halsted Row, Salyers mentioned a building that I had never heard of, The 723. As the name suggests, The 723 is located at 723 W Diversey Pkwy, just a block south of Halsted Row in Lake View, so I walked over to check out the open house.
As anyone who is familiar with Chicago Graystone probably knows, most of their buildings look pretty similar, with the notable exception of Mod in the West Loop. The developer has a handful of active developments in Lake View, and most of them are three- to five-story, boxy brick buildings with those big brick balconies facing the street.
The 723 has has eight 1,700 to 1,900 square-foot two- and three-bedroom condos priced from the $440s to the $640s with garage parking included. Below are a few photos of the furnished model, which is a ground-level two-bedroom / two-bath priced in the $440s.
I've always been impressed with how quickly the Central Station high-rises are constructed. Take The Enterprise Companies' Museum Park Place II, for example. The 29-story high-rise at 1901 S Calumet Ave has been out of the ground since the summer, and already it looks like it's almost ready to be topped off.
Last month, Sun-Times business reporter David Roeder reported that residents of the first Museum Park Place high-rise at 1841 S Calumet Ave were experiencing serious problems with water leakage in the roof, walls and basement of that building. While reading that, I couldn't help but wonder if there might be a correlation between the speed with which these buildings are built and the quality of construction.
Residents of that building "took their complaints to the street, picketing in front of Enterprise's condo sales center," Roeder wrote. Not the sort of behavior you expect to see from luxury condo buyers in the South Loop.
The building at 1901 S Calumet Ave will be a mirror image of the first Museum Park Place high-rise, with the same red cross-hatch pattern across the front. Museum Park Place II will have 276 one- to three-bedroom condos that are priced from the $250s to the $600s. At last check, a little more than half of the homes in the building had been sold.
In the second half of my Joewalk through "East Uptown," I come across five more new-construction developments and rehabs between Argyle Street and Foster Avenue.
Catch a glimpse of some of the new-construction and rehabbed condos I found in the eastern half of Uptown last week. In this video, I start off in the 4300 block of North Kenmore Avenue and make my way up to the 4900 block of North Winthrop Avenue, passing five developments along the way.
Check back this weekend for the second half of my "Joewalking" tour, or watch the video now on the YoChicago YouTube channel.
Before heading over to Clybourn Green last weekend, I visited Fountain View, where a furnished model was opened about a month ago. Like Clybourn Green, Fountain View is being marketed as a green development (see a list of green features here), but more than anything, I think the development benefits from its location. Although the address of the development is 2326 W Giddings St, the building fronts Lincoln Avenue in the heart of Lincoln Square.
The model unit is a 1,360 square-foot two-bedroom / two-bath unit with a den on the fourth floor that's priced in the $540s. The model was pretty nice, but the most impressive (and the most expensive) condos seem to be the corner units, because they look out on both Lincoln Avenue and the small public square to the south. Both of the corner units I looked at - units 204 and 404 - were unfinished and unsold. Both of them have two bedrooms and two baths and 1,518 square feet of living space, and they're priced in the $530s and the $550s.
According to the price sheet I picked up, seven of the 18 homes in Fountain View have been sold, and the remaining two- and three-bedroom condos are priced from the $470s to the $550s.
