BUCKTOWN — A long-empty storefront on the southeast corner of Damen and Webster avenues on the northern edge of Bucktown finally has a tenant.
Michigan-based Flagstar Bank will open a 5,000 square-foot home loan center at 2157 N. Damen Ave., it was announced Wednesday by broker Andrea Miller of Miller Chicago Real Estate.
Visible from the expressway, the 40,000-square-foot, four-story mixed commercial and residential building was constructed in 2007 by prolific developer Krzysztof Karbowski, who'd intended for the 19 apartment rentals on the top three floors to be condominiums.
Karbowski's financial misfortunes caused the building to be "tied up forever in foreclosure" until Marc Realty bought the bank-owned real estate over the summer, Miller said.
Flagstar Bank is expected to move into the corner space within the next few months and will take up half of the building's available 10,000 square feet of street-level storefront space, Miller said.
The home loan center will be the building's second commercial tenant in the space, joining an insurance brokerage that recently signed a lease for the second floor.
Miller said Parr Insurance now occupies about one-third of 6,000 square-feet of available second-level office space.
Heralding the five-year lease with Flagstar as a sign of progress for the corner (which recently lost a neighborhood coffee shop, the Bucktown Beanery, in a storefront opposite the future loan center) Miller said, "It will be great to have a large national tenant at that corner area since the building has been vacant for over three years."
