Greg Mutz’s AMLI Exits River North Ground Lease For $13.5M

Greg Mutz’s multifamily investment firm AMLI Residential bought its partner out of a River North apartment property where the companies built 318 rentals after switching from a plan for condominiums.

AMLI, under CEO and chairman Mutz, paid $13.5 million for the land at 808 North Wells Street, a deal that ended a ground lease with an LLC controlled by Zach Smith, the son of Smithfield Properties’ late founder Bill Smith. The elder Smith’s sudden death of a heart attack at 65 in 2016 contributed to the demise of a 23-story luxury condos project for the site, public records show.

After the condos idea was scuttled, AMLI entered the property in a partnership with Smithfield and changed up the development plan to make it a micro-apartments project. The project featured units with an average size under 600 square feet in a 17-story building that was shorter and wider than the design Smithfield had initially considered.

AMLI is taking full control of the property as the block is about to be further transformed by developer JDL’s $1.2 billion, 8-acre mega-project called North Union, which aims to bring more than 2,600 new apartments and 30,000 square feet of retail to River North as portions of the adjacent Moody Bible Institute campus is redeveloped.

Construction of the AMLI-Smithfield apartments and about 6,000 square feet of retail at the property wrapped up last year, at a cost of about $75 million to the developers, according to published reports. Neither AMLI nor Smithfield returned requests for comment.

Smithfield purchased the site for $2.6 million in 2015, when it held a brick commercial building that was demolished at a cost of about $450,000, public records show. The ground lease it issued to AMLI as construction was getting underway on the apartments was signed in 2018 under a 99-year term, and gave AMLI the right of first refusal to buy the real estate should Smithfield decide to sell its interest.

Retailers at the AMLI project are about to get an infusion of new neighborhood residents as potential customers as JDL advances its North Union project, with caisson work set to begin this month on the first phase, JDL’s Joey Letchinger said. Construction has kicked off on the initial 236-unit apartment building at 920 North Wells. That will be followed by another 410-unit building at 878 North Wells. JDL is buying the Moody site from the religious organization in phases.