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Jumping on the “co-living” trend, Chicago developer John Bucksbaum hopes to build a dorm-style project on the corner of Chicago and LaSalle, where residents would lease space by the bed. His plan includes 36 units and 108 beds. He will team up with New York-based Common, a company that owns co-living apartment spaces in Chicago and around the country. [Crain’s]
Meanwhile, a developer hopes to build a college-centric hotel. AJ Capital Partners purchased an eight-story, 91-room Homestead apartment building on 1625 Hinman Ave., near Northwestern University last week. They hope to renovate the building with $13 million and turn it into a new hotel called the Graduate Evanston. AJ Capital has opened 20 similar hotels in college towns across the country. [Crain’s]
The NHP Foundation and Drummond Development want to redevelop the Covent Hotel, an SRO in Lincoln Park, into 30 affordable-rate apartments with ground-level retail. Their plan also includes building a 84-unit residential complex next door. The nonprofit purchased the hotel in 2016 for $7 million. [Curbed]
Portillo’s Restaurants Group CEO Michael Osanloo plans to build a $2 million house in Hinsdale. Osanloo and his wife, Mary, bought a $2.15 million Colonial revival-style house and the land it sits on in 2018. They plan to demolish the current home and build a 12,500-square-foot home in its place. [Tribune]
Speculative industrial projects are still on the rise in Chicago. A Colliers International report showed 8.8-million square feet of new industrial projects that went online in the third quarter. It’s the largest quarterly total since 2013, as Chicago’s surging industrial market isn’t slowing up. [ReJournals]
GSP Development withdrew its proposal for a medical office in Winfield. The decision comes after the village did not finalize approval of the project because the developer could not commit to keeping the building — currently a greenhouse — on the tax roll. [Daily Herald]
Masayoshi Son is “embarrassed and impatient” with the Vision Fund’s losses. As analysts foresee billions in losses from WeWork’s scrapped IPO and Uber’s collapsing stock price, the SoftBank boss told Japan’s Nikkei Business magazine that the fund’s results have fallen well short of his goals. Despite current struggles, Son said that he expects his investments in WeWork and Uber to be profitable in a decade or so. [Bloomberg]
Blackstone sold a 100-building industrial portfolio to Nuveen for $3 billion. The 29 million-square-foot portfolio spans the country from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, and was part of the massive $18.7 billion logistics portfolio that Blackstone bought from Singapore’s GLP earlier this year. [TRD]
Realogy is retooling its iBuyer program to give owners more “speed and certainty.” A year after first joining the instant-homebuying craze, the brokerage giant is now rolling out RealSure, a revamped version of the platform that will allow sellers to accept a cash offer at any time within 45 days. The service is currently available in Dallas and Denver through a number of Realogy franchises, and will soon launch in markets such as Chicago, Tampa, Houston and Sacramento. [Inman]
Some co-living companies are looking to cut costs with fewer amenities and smaller spaces. A new wave of startups is looking for ways to provide affordable housing to low-wage workers in expensive cities, but may run afoul of single-room occupancy regulations as they expand to more markets. “This is the only attainable housing solution for them realistically, at least without subsidy,” said the founder of Atlanta-based PadSplit, whose average tenant makes about $20,000 a year. [WSJ]