CoStar Group
These buildings at Wells Street and Chicago Avenue would be razed for a 21-story residential project.
An East Coast developer plans a 21-story residential building in River North, another vote of confidence in downtown Chicago’s nascent comeback.
Vista Property Group is seeking the city’s permission to build a 178-unit tower on Wells Street just south of Chicago Avenue, about a block east of the CTA’s Chicago Avenue station. It would be the first residential development in Chicago for Vista, which has offices in New York and Edison, N.J., and owns a bunch of commercial properties here.
With the financing in hand, Vista broke ground this week on a project that will add about 100,000 square feet of offices to the West Loop, a bold move in a central business district that is now awash in vacant, available office space amid the COVID-19 crisis. And it s forging ahead despite little clarity on when companies displaced by the pandemic will return to offices in greater numbers or how much space they ll need. We think there s a strong demand for high-quality, new (office) construction not only before COVID but also as a result of COVID, said Vista Principal Hymie Mishan, who estimated the new building will be completed in mid-2022. We believe that companies are going to look at the future of office space in a post-COVID environment and look at the boutique, class A nature of our building and see some opportunities.