A longtime investor in Chicago’s Fulton Market is looking to sell land on the northern edge of the expanding former meatpacking district, opening the door to a smaller residential or office project amid waves of large-scale developments.
MAB Capital Management has hired JLL brokers to sell a 13,703-square-foot surface parking lot at 450 N. Morgan St., just north of train tracks that run along edge of the city’s fastest-growing neighborhood.
Real estate investor and restaurateur Marc Bushala’s firm has owned the site since paying $1.9 million in 2015, and it is likely worth multiples of that price after years of large-scale construction in the area since that time.
That includes the arrival of the global headquarters of McDonald’s and Mondelez International, and the Midwest headquarters of Google, as well as hotels and a more recent burst of high-rise residential development.
Most of those projects stand far above the five-story boutique office zoning MAB previously secured for the site but never launched.
MAB previously sold buildings at 400 and 401 N. Morgan to Vista Property Group in early 2020 for almost $31.7 million. Bushala’s Morgan Manufacturing event space and Tabu restaurant remain tenants at 401 N. Morgan, but he is looking to continue cashing in on Morgan Street properties between Hubbard Street and Grand Avenue because they “are no longer strategic to our current development plans,” Bushala said an email to CoStar News.
In 2021, MAB offered sites at 450 and 464 N. Morgan for sale, but no deal was completed at the time. Although the new listing is for only 450 N. Morgan, Bushala said he would entertain offers for both sites.
Bushala declined to comment on expected pricing.
“I think both sites are excellent locations for office or residential use and have become increasingly attractive over the years given all of the new real estate development that has taken place” north of Fulton near train tracks, Bushala said in the email.
MAB’s sites are not far from the Guinness Open Gate Brewery, one of the Irish brewer’s two U.S. facilities. That facility, which opened last year at 901 W. Kinzie St., also is on the market for sale.
JLL broker Dan Reynolds, who is representing MAB, said he expects offers from developers that would be contingent on securing residential zoning, albeit for projects significantly smaller than those that have arrived in the area in recent years.
“This is a very unique Fulton Market location where a project can be delivered in a more boutique format, whereas a lot of sites in Fulton Market are larger-scale development opportunities," Reynolds said.
That includes a 48,838-square-foot site at 345 N. Aberdeen St., which developer Sterling Bay recent put on the market with the anticipation that a buyer could put an approximately 550-unit apartment tower on the site.
Other major multifamily projects nearby include Related Midwest’s 300-unit The Row Fulton Market, which at 495 feet became the neighborhood’s tallest building, and multiple big projects completed or in the works by active developers in Fulton Market such as Shapack Partners, Sterling Bay and Vista.