A longtime Chicago developer is buying back a North Side boutique office building at a fraction of the price he sold it for seven years ago and plans to potentially redevelop it into about 200 apartments.

Mike Drew, a longtime principal at Structured Development, earlier this month paid $10.5 million for the four-story, approximately 100,000-square-foot building at 1333 N. Kingsbury St., Cook County property records show.

That is far below the $27.8 million price an affiliate of Swiss bank Credit Suisse paid for the building when Drew and other investors sold it in February 2017, during a stronger market for investment sales and office leasing.

The drop in price was “compelling” to Drew, Zev Salomon’s Chicago-based development firm ZSD and other investors who are part of the new ownership group, Drew told CoStar News. Drew said the deal is a personal investment and it is not part of Structured.

Drew, who turns 70 later this year, said he and co-founder Daniel Lukas are in the process of winding down Structured, which has completed several large developments in the area along the Clybourn Corridor shopping district. That includes the NewCity shopping center and other retail and multifamily projects, such as the recently completed 27-story, 327-unit Foundry apartment tower just down the street at 1475 N. Kingsbury.

“We’re buying it as a commercial office investment, but we’re looking at the possibility of converting it to residential,” Drew said of 1333 N. Kingsbury. “We’re running it parallel. It could go either way.”

The building was about 80% leased when it went on the market several months ago, according to a brochure from JLL brokers who represented the seller. But some leases are expiring soon, and the largest tenant — college sports recruiting network NCSA, which leases 21,738 square feet, according to CoStar data — is set to leave, Drew said.

“We’re looking at potential office leases in the office building,” Drew said. “If the leases come through, namely to replace NCSA, we’ll keep it as an office building. Otherwise, we’ll proceed with a redevelopment to residential.”

Switzerland’s UBS, which acquired Credit Suisse last year, declined to comment on the sale.

Drew said he’s confident city officials will support a zoning change because the residential project would include 20% of the units with affordable rents. He is already in the process of seeking a zoning change from the city, Drew added.

The Kingsbury Street building is near retail including large Apple, Whole Foods and REI stores, residential towers and the wealthy, densely populated Lincoln Park and Old Town neighborhoods.

It also is not far from several major developments in the works or coming soon, including the city’s first casino campus, Sterling Bay’s mixed-use Lincoln Yards megadevelopment, and thousands of apartments on and along Goose Island by Canadian developer Onni Group.

The seller was represented by JLL brokers Jaime Fink, Bruce Miller, Patrick Shields, Sam DiFrancesca and Jennifer Hull.