JDL, Centaur Pay $90M+ for Discounted Fulton Market Apartments

James Letchinger has paired with bigtime former Blackstone executive John Schreiber to buy The Parker Fulton Market at a discounted price.

Letchinger’s Chicago-based firm JDL — developer of premier residential towers One Chicago and No. 9 Walton — got involved in the deal with Schreiber’s Lake Forest-based family office Centaur Capital Partners in order to manage the 227-unit apartment building, at 730 West Couch Place, and further its relationship with Blackstone Real Estate Advisors co-founder Schreiber, according to people familiar with the matter.

Schreiber’s plans to buy the building were reported this summer, but JDL’s involvement was previously undisclosed. JLL represented the sellers in the deal and confirmed JDL’s involvement.

The sellers, a venture of J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Atlantic Residential, are taking a haircut on the deal from the $111 million they paid for the 29-story building in 2017. Schreiber and Letchinger are paying more than $90 million but less than $100 million for the asset, the people said.

Northwestern Mutual funded the buyer’s acquisition loan, with the debt accounting for about 65 percent of the final price, they said. The loan is on a fixed-rate five-year term, and JLL also represented the borrower in securing the financing package, a news release said. A mortgage hasn’t yet been publicly recorded by Cook County.

The Parker’s sale marks another of several losses J.P. Morgan’s investment arm has taken in recent months on Chicago real estate deals. Earlier this year it sold the 198-unit apartment building at 850 North Lake Shore Drive to Miami-based developer Crescent Heights for just under $80 million — far below the $140 million J.P. Morgan paid in 2016. Crescent Heights plans to convert the Lake Shore Drive building to for-sale condominiums.

Neither JDL nor Centaur immediately returned requests for comment. J.P. Morgan declined to comment.

The Parker was built by Chicago-based Shapack Partners and Focus Development, opening in 2016 to accelerate Fulton Market’s transformation from a former meatpacking hub into Chicago’s hottest neighborhood for commercial real estate in recent years.

JLL’s Kevin Girard, Mark Stern and Zach Kaufman represented the sellers in the deal. Another JLL team of Danny Kaufman, Matthew Schoenfeldt and Medina Spiodic arranged the financing.