Focal Point Community Campus
When Lucky Camargo drives past the vast stretch of vacant land on 31st Street and Kedzie Avenue, she’s reminded of what used to be in Little Village.
It’s the site of the old Washburne Trade School, which she said created secure, well-paying jobs for people in the community. But now, the neighborhood is at the mercy of an unstable gig economy.
“This neighborhood is under siege and income inequality is rampant, which makes this type of exploitation possible,” Camargo said. “They [St. Anthony Hospital] benefit from public dollars and then collect all the profits once it’s done.”
It’s also one of the few big Loop retail spaces to change hands in recent years, a period of general prosperity until the coronavirus pandemic pummeled retailers and their landlords. Not only are more people shopping online, but employees in many downtown offices are working from home, meaning less business at Loop stores and restaurants and more uncertainty for investors.
A spokeswoman for the School of the Art Institute confirmed that Novak paid $24.5 million for the State Street property. That works out to $571 per square foot, a low price relative to those paid for other retail spaces in the neighborhood in the recent past.
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Here are Chicago’s 10 biggest investment sales of 2020
Office deals led the pack, including sale of McDonald’s HQ in Fulton Market and Michael Shvo’s purchase of “Big Red” tower in Downtown Chicago /
As with most other cities, Chicago’s commercial real estate market went off the rails in 2020, upending what had been a promising start to the year. Demand for office space tanked, hotels emptied out leaving owners struggling to pay their loans and Covid restrictions strangled retailers whose customers dared to venture into brick-and-mortar stores.