CHICAGO—NelsonHill, a Chicago-based commercial real estate firm, completed over $30 million in transactions in the city's South Loop neighborhood in 2014, and principal Mark Nelson tells GlobeSt.com that it's a sign that the neighborhood has finally turned around. Back in 2008, things had been looking up. The city was planning to help kick-start an entertainment district in the area and prospective buyers were combing through the neighborhood's properties.
“We had B.B. King looking at a building on the historic Motor Row, but then everything came crashing down,” he says. The musician had been just one of several possible buyers for 2245 S. Michigan Ave., a three-story, 22,500-square-foot former Buick showroom, but the recession dampened prices and most owners in the neighborhood were patient enough to wait out the storm.
“They just waited for market demand to increase,” Nelson adds, and that pivotal moment seems to have arrived. Windy City RE, LLC, for example, recently bought 2245 S. Michigan Ave., for $3.2 million. NelsonHill represented seller Mark Milgrom. The building has heavy timbers and 18' clear ceilings, attributes sought after by many high-tech and creative firms looking for office space.
NelsonHill also represented David Baum, the seller of a historic 100,000-square-foot building at 2230 S. Michigan Ave. in a transaction to Motor Row Properties LLC for $8.65 million. The building, originally built in 1922 and known as the Marmon Building, is on the National Register of Historic Places and was one of the first automotive showrooms outside of Detroit. JLL's Molly Carroll represented the buyer.
Furthermore, the firm represented 2400 Michigan Avenue LLC in the sale of its 30,048-square-foot building at 2412 S. Michigan Ave., once the home of the Illinois Automotive Club, along with two adjacent pieces of land to Alex Pearsall for $4.25 million.
Over the course of the 2014 calendar year, NelsonHill represented South Loop owners in eight separate sales transactions. Nelson says the old idea of making the area into an entertainment district is still feasible, but it would still need a group ready to push the concept and buy up enough properties to achieve critical mass. “It's difficult to do it one at a time.”
And “the South Loop hasn't seen the same level of user demand” as the burgeoning West Loop, where Google decided to occupy a huge block of space and has brought many other companies along in its wake. Still, “the pendulum has definitely swung over to the sell side.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
