More and more, the East Loop is standing out as Chicago’s Left Bank.
Academic and arts institutions are increasingly colonizing old buildings along South Michigan and South Wabash Avenues and South State Street.
One little noted acquisition that took place recently was the Art Institute of Chicago’s $4.65 million purchase of a modest 17-story office building of early 1900s vintage at 116. S. Michigan Ave.
The Art Institute has started making some necessary alterations and plans to move its personnel, information systems and membership records departments to the structure beginning in May, said Robert Mars, the institute’s executive vice president for administration.
The Art Institute owns the 112 S. Michigan Ave. building next door, which it has converted over the past few years to dormitory and classroom space, and is also turning the historic Chicago Building at State and Madison Streets into dormitory space for the School of the Art Institute. And it owns a building at 37 S. Wabash Ave.
The new purchase is just one of a wave of real estate deals done, made or talked about recently by major academic and arts institutions in the area, including the $105 million renovation of Orchestra Hall into Symphony Center and DePaul University’s reported look at a $230 million expansion of its Loop campus.
The trend is a huge boon to the city, because it adds new luster to South Michigan Avenue and other parts of the East Loop that had been growing seedy over the past generation.
“I think it’s a very positive thing to have the identification of that area as a district for upper-crust arts,” said developer Tem Horwitz.
Horwitz has a soft spot for the 116 S. Michigan Ave. building, which started life as a municipal courthouse in 1907 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
He was in a group that owned the building for 12 years until turning it back to the lender, a Pennsylvania public pension fund, early last year. The lender sold it to the Art Institute.
Horwitz said he and his partners put millions into rehabbing it after acquiring it in 1984. “It was a real dump,” he said.
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Though it didn’t work economically for Horwitz–except for tax losses–he’s glad to see it in the hands of the Art Institute. “They’re a natural user,” he said.
And the price paid to the pension fund, he noted, was a little over a third of the amount owed on the mortgage held by the fund.
As such venerable East Loop buildings get recycled into homes for high art and higher education, the city could consider designating the area a special district to acknowledge its pre-eminence as a culture center.
It appears the area is reaching that critical mass at which location, location becomes promotion, promotion. One can see art fairs, artsy sidewalk paving and who knows what else.
Border petrol: A one-acre parcel on the Chicago-Evanston border at Sheridan Road, which has been home to a Shell gas station and car wash for the past 20 years, is being sold at a sealed-bid auction next Wednesday.
Auctioneer David Kaufman said the land has been in one family for more than a generation and the family members decided to sell when Shell pulled out– rudely depriving North Shore commuters of an ideal spot to spruce up their cars on the way home.
Kaufman suggested the land could be used for a strip mall, restaurant or retirement home. In the latter case, residents would have a great view of Lake Michigan on one side, and Calvary Cemetery on the other.
Leasing lessons: “Tenants (downtown) are never an easy catch,” says Jacque Ducharme, manager of the Chicago office of Julien J. Studley Inc., which specializes in representing tenants. “They can always say they’ll move to the suburbs.”
These and other pearls of office leasing wisdom will be cast at the battle of brokers and tenant representatives being staged by the Commercial Real Estate Organization from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday at the Bluepoint Oyster Bar, 741 W. Randolph St.
The issue debated will be the power balance between tenants and landlords in a tightening market. Along with Ducharme, tenant reps will be championed by Nancy Pacher of U.S. Equities Realty and Steve Stratton of Tanguay-Burke-Stratton.
The property broker team is composed of Barry Bass of Tishman Speyer Properties, Michael Sheinkop of Equity Properties and Steve Smith of LaSalle Partners. The moderator will be Sam Budwig Jr. of SMB Co. The public is invited.