One of the world’s top makers of harps wants to sell its building along the edge of Chicago’s fast-growing Fulton Market district, a once-gritty pocket of the city from which the company has produced ornate instruments since the late 1800s.
Lyon & Healy Harps has hired KWill RE brokers to sell its five-story building at 168 N. Ogden Ave., which is expected to formally hit the market soon, the Chicago-based brokerage said. The building has long produced handmade instruments sold and played throughout the world.
The approximately 58,000-square-foot building is just west of Fulton Market, the former meatpacking district that in recent years has become the fastest-growing urban office market in the country, with tenants including the global headquarters of McDonald’s and Mondelez International and the Midwest headquarters of Google.
Developers also have put up retail space, boutique hotels and apartment towers. That includes Related Midwest’s 495-foot-tall The Row Fulton Market, the neighborhood’s tallest.
Amid the development boom, meatpackers and other longtime businesses have sold off their properties and moved to modern facilities in other areas of the city where real estate values are lower.
Some developers have continued pushing west in the area, including the 242-unit Evo Union Park apartment building that Marquette Management developed and sold at 1454 W. Randolph St. alongside Lyon & Healy’s building.
“We’re right on the edge of the West Loop that has been grounds for immense redevelopment,” said Marco Federow, one of the KWill brokers marketing the building for sale. “The neighborhood has been great and we’re absolutely going to capitalize on that.”
There is no asking price for the building, which Lyon & Healy is expected to move out of by early 2024. It is being marketed as a reuse project rather than a demolition.
“This is a beautiful building that is part of Chicago history,” he said. “Someone will take this building into the future, whether it’s an office or multifamily development.”
The property is for sale as the company plans to move almost 8 miles west to an industrial building at 6500 W. Cortland St., which it bought for just over $4 million in November 2021, according to Cook County property records.
A sign on the exterior of the Ogden Avenue building reads “Harpmakers to the world since 1889,” and its instruments have been used from the New York Philharmonic to the Bolshoi Ballet, according to the company’s website.
The company is named for two Bostonians who had just arrived in Chicago in 1864, George Lyon and Patrick Healy. They initially ran a music shop on the city’s North Side.
Their harp company manufactured its first instrument in 1889 on the same block of Ogden Avenue where the soon-to-close facility now stands, according to a company history on the site.
It’s not clear how long the company has used the current building, and the company did not respond to requests for comment from CoStar News. The building runs along elevated train tracks above Lake Street.
“At the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago, Lyon & Healy had a two-story pavilion adorned with terra cotta and gold where it presented its harps and held daily concerts for the entire six months of the fair,” the website says. “The exhibition of harps received a supreme diploma by the jury of awards for its many improvements to this ancient instrument.”
Since 1987, the company has been a subsidiary of Italy’s Salvi Harps.
Earlier this year, when seeking Class 6(b) property tax incentives to help offset the costs of its relocation, Lyon & Healy told city officials it planned to increase the number of employees from 133 at the current building to 165 at the new site.
For the Record
The seller is represented by KWill RE brokers Federow, Matt Knafel and Hugh Williams.